This trench warfare isn't by any means the simple business you might suppose, and neither, of course, is any other kind of warfare. There can be no question of just going for the enemy bald-headed. He wishes you would, of course; just as we wish to goodness _he_ would. You have to understand that up there about the front line, the surrounding air and country can at any moment be converted into a zone of living fire--gas, projectiles, H.E. (High Explosive, you know) flame, bullets, bursting shrapnel. If you raise a finger out of trenches by daylight, you present Fritz with a target, which he will very promptly and gratefully take, and blow to smithereens. That's understood, isn't it? Right. To be able to fight, in any sort of old way at all, you must continue to live--you and your men. To continue to live you must have cover. Hence, nothing is more important than to make your trenches habitable, and feasible; admitting, that is, of fairly easy and quick communication. To live, you see, you must eat and drink. The trenches contain no A B C's. Every crumb of bread, every drop of tea or water, like every cartridge you fire, must be carried up from the rear on men's shoulders, along many hundreds of yards of communicating trenches. Also, in case you are suddenly attacked, or have to attack, quick movement is vital. Nature apparently abhors a trench, which is a kind of a vacuum, and not precisely lovable, anyhow; and, in this part of the world, she proceeds wherever possible to fill it with water. Pumps? Why, certainly. But clay and slush sides cave in. Whizz-bangs and H.E. descend from on high displacing much porridge-like soil. Men hurrying to and fro day and night, disturb and mash up much earth in these ditches. And, no matter how or why, there is mud; mud unspeakable and past all computation. Consider it quietly for a moment, and you will feel as we do about duck-walks--I trust the inventor has been given a dukedom--and realise the pressing importance of various material details leading up to that all-important strafing of Boches. But there, the notion of trying to tell you about trenches in one letter is, I find, hopelessly beyond me, and would only exhaust you, even if I could bring it off. I can only hope gradually to get some sort of a picture into your mind, so that you will have a background of sorts for such news of our doings as I'm able to send you as we go on. Just now, I am going to tackle an alarming stack of uncensored letters from Nos. 1 and 2 Platoons--some of the beggars appear to be extraordinarily polygamous in the number of girls they write to; bless 'em!--and then to turn in and sleep. My goodness, it's a fine thing, sleep, out of trenches! But I'll write again, probably to-morrow.