_Sept. 4._ Day and I working all day on our dug-out and in making a place where we can have a bath—I shudder when I try to recall my last one. _Sept. 5._ Up at 2 a.m. and working until 10 with the whole company endeavouring to construct a road across a semi-dry lake. It is obviously a staff project and would have been condemned by a first year civil-engineering student—we cast our brick upon the waters in the vain hope that it will return after many days. Meanwhile the advance creeps forward across the swamps in front and shows signs of being bogged as the resistance stiffens. Yesterday our two line brigades had 500 casualties, and after gaining the summit of Messines Ridge they had to fall back owing to lack of support. Thus it seems that we shall play the German game once more by following them into the worst of the mud for the winter—God help us if we do, the 19–year olds would die like flies in a hard winter. Had my bath and feel like a new man. _Sept. 6._ Dumped a few more tons of brick into the lake—at least it is a peaceful job and keeps the men out of mischief. Played Badminton and wrote letters—the war seems to have fallen into abeyance. _Sept. 7._ Heavy gas-shelling on the lake this morning robbed us of our constitutional and forced an early return. After dinner we turned out with torches and heavy sticks to hunt rats round the dug-outs. There were no casualties among the rats, but Day sprained an ankle. _Sept. 8._ Still brick dumping, although no progress is apparent as yet. During the morning I walked across the dyke to talk to the company working in the morass on the far side and sincerely wished I hadn’t. They had been finding bodies all morning, not more than a month dead and just coming to the worst stages. Whilst I was there, they picked up two kilted officers—glorious big men they must have been but looking so childishly pathetic as they lay there. Unconsciously we all fell silent, and I saw a D.C.M. Sergeant-Major with tears in his eyes. Hurriedly I turned away and, walking back to the men, thanked God that people at home can never even imagine the deaths their men are called upon to die. We are going into the war again to-morrow. The rains are with us. _Sept. 9._ Two sections moved into forward billets at Negro Farm—an appalling place consisting of two stinking dug-outs under the ruins of the former homestead—it beggars description but closely resembles that famous Bairnsfather drawing, “We are staying at a farm.” It has poured all day, and when we arrived about eleven this morning there wasn’t shelter for a quarter of the men and none for the horses. I explored two or three ruins in the neighbourhood, but they were all worse than our own midden, so we had to make the best of it. Fortunately the cheerfulness of the men seems to increase with their misfortunes and they are now all under cover of some sort—even the horses are more or less protected from the worst of the weather.