"Last night the whole Battalion went out on working parties; so I had command of a party. My party was detailed to repair the parapet of a communication trench just behind our front line. I set off with Sergeant Williams and a party of fourteen men of my platoon at 9.40, just as it was getting dark. We were soon in the open fields and so could see all around us the ruined buildings of the great city. Three shells fell across the path we had traversed, _after_ we had passed the points. Fritz was just a little too late on each occasion! We went on in the dusk, amidst the flashes of booming guns and exploding shells and flares lighting up the weird ruins and ghostly country, as far as a dump (Potidje) where the remainder of the Battalion appeared to be congregated. It occurred to me what a number would have been knocked out if a shell had burst just by this dump just then! Fortunately no such thing happened. Tools were drawn here; then we proceeded on our way by platoons. The whole region was swarming with little wooden crosses where lie the thousands who have fallen on this oft-fought, long-fought, ever contending, battlefield. We threaded our way along a winding communication trench (Pagoda Trench). We passed a party in the trench with bayonets fixed--a party of one officer, Lieutenant Alexander, and thirty men of the 1/4th King's Own--waiting to go over the top for a bombing raid on a section of the enemy front line. 'Good-byee!' they laughed as we passed them. Eventually we reached the point at which we were to commence work. Flares were going up the whole time; the enemy _must_ have seen us: the whole crowd of us all in the open by the side of the trench which was to be repaired! When a flare goes up the whole place is as light as day for a few seconds; and they were going up all round the Salient--what remains of it, one side disappeared on Thursday morning! Now and then a machine-gun would rattle a few rounds, and we would all duck down; but none of them were ranged on our party.