The fire trench in this particular bit is rather a mockery, as "the Peacemaker" said, when he tried to climb out of it, our first night in, to have a look at the barbed wire and No Man's Land. He had a revolver in one hand and a bomb in the other, but I am pleased to say the safety-pin of that bomb was efficient; and, in any case, I relieved him of it after he fell back the second time. The sides of that trench have been so unmercifully pounded by the Boche, and the rain has been so persistent of late that the porridge here is more like gruel than the breakfast dish, and the average sand-bag in the parapet, when not submerged, is as unfriendly to get a grip on, as one of those crustaceous pink bombs they sometimes swindle you with at restaurants. You know, the kind you chase round your plate and find splinter-proof. Thirty or forty yards north from Whizz-bang Corner, in the fire trench, you come to a loop turn to the rear called Whitehall, not because there's a War Office there, but because there's a queer little vein of chalk which disappointingly peters out again in less than a dozen paces. That leads to the Company Headquarters dug-out; an extraordinary hole, I thought, when I first saw it; a jolly nice, homely dug-out I think it now, and with a roof--well, not shell-proof, you know, but water-tight, and quite capable of standing a whizz or a grenade, or anything short of serious H.E. You stride over a good little dam and then down two steps to get into it, and it has a real door, carried up, I suppose, from the village in the rear. It also has a gilt-edged looking-glass, a good packing-case table, the remains of two wooden chairs, two shelves made of rum-jar cases, and two good solid wire-strung bunks, one over the other. There's no doubt it is some dug-out. And, madam, don't you go for to think that there's anything contemptible about our trenches, anyhow. Perhaps I pitched it a bit strong about that glue patch. In any case, I promise you two things: (1) They'll be very different trenches before long if "A" Company has two or three turns of duty in them. (2) They're every bit as good as, and a bit better than, the trenches opposite, where the Hun is; and I know it _because I've been there_. I meant to have told you of that to-night, but I've left it too late, and must wait for my next letter. But it's quite right. I've had a look at their front line and found it distinctly worse than ours, and got back without a scratch, to sign myself still your "_Temporary Gentleman_." TAKING OVER ON A QUIET NIGHT