I can assure you it is a perfectly _safe_ distance.
So you need not worry. I can tell you it has been _some_ twenty days! I
have never experienced such a twenty days before; and I am glad to be
looking back upon them, writing during the last few hours, rather than
at the beginning. We are all glad to be going out again. General
Stockwell has ordered that we have three days' complete rest; and Sir
Hubert Gough has issued an order that on no account are the men in his
Army to be worked more than four hours per day, inclusive of marching to
and from parade ground, while out of the line. So the prospect is
bright. It is now 4.10, and we are going to have tea. Our bombardment is
still making a great row."

My diary of the same date (July 20) states:

"At 4.30 p.m. Captain Briggs, Dickinson, Allen, Sergeant Donovan and I
walked via Wells Cross Roads, La Brique (where our guns were very close
together, their sound almost deafening us as we passed them), to
Liverpool Trench. Here we reconnoitred our starting points for the
forthcoming push. Then Allen and I went on with Sergeant Donovan up
Threadneedle Street to Bilge Trench. We watched, through glasses, the
German line going up in smoke. In present-day warfare I certainly think
that artillery is the most formidable arm of the Service; it is
artillery which is the chief factor deciding success or failure in all
the great battles in the West. It is even now preparing the way for us.
After having had a look round from over the parapet in Bilge Trench we
returned the same way we had come; and we actually got safely back to
the Ramparts without having any adventures whatever!"

When we got back to the Ramparts our tour in the line was at an end. All
we had to do now was await the arrival of relief. And a very pleasant
sensation, indeed, that is to weary soldiers! The sensation of "relief"
is the happiest of all the various sensations one had "out there." There
were just a few hours of irritating expectancy to live through--followed
sometimes, as at Givenchy in 1918, by some boring experience such as a
"stand to" in some particular, and generally uninviting, positions--and
then one would be free, safe and in a position and condition to enjoy a
delightful sleep: free and safe for a few days, until the all too soon
moment for return should come!

CHAPTER XIII

RELIEF

My diary of July 20 goes on to state how our relief was effected: "We
were relieved by a company of th