The mail has just arrived. George got five, the little round fat fellow _nine_, A. P. two, and John and me shake hands with a duck’s-egg. Still the second mentioned has his troubles. One of his many inamoratas has written to him in French. He knows French just about as well as he knows how to sing! Nuff said! John has “parti’d” to his triple-starred working-party. The men have not got any letters either. You should hear them! The most expert “curser” of the Billingsgate fishmarket would turn heliotrope with envy. George is feeling badly too. He lent his flash-light to dish out rations with. That is to say, to illuminate what the best writers of nondescript fiction call the “Cimmerian gloom!” A. P. has had letters from his wife. Lucky dog! She takes up four pages telling him how she adores him. This is a _beastly_ rotten war. Fritz is a rotter too. My dug-out is two hundred yards north by nor’-east. Every time I have to make the trip he never fails to keep the Cimmerian gloom strictly “Cim.” And the bath-mats are broken in two places, and I’ve found both of them every time. Another strafe from the Adjutant. May jackals defile his grave, but he’ll never have one in France, anyhow. “Please render an account to Orderly Room of the number of men in your unit who are qualified plumbers.” We haven’t any. If we had we should have mended the hole in the roof, which leaks on John’s bed. It has only just begun to leak. It will be fun to hear what John says when he comes back. Only he may be speechless. The little round fat fellow is still reading letters, and A. P. is hunting in his nether garments. “Kinder scratterin’ aroun’!” So far the bag numbers five killed and two badly winged, but still on the run. Somebody has turned out the guard. Yells of fire. After due inspection proves to be the C.O.’s tunic. It was a new one! May his batman preserve himself in one piece. More yells of “Guard turn out!” Support my tottering footsteps! Our--that is to say _my_ dug-out is on fire.... Confusion.... Calm.... I have no dug-out, no anything.... This is, pardonnez-moi, a Hell of a war! PANSIES There are some pansies on my table, arranged in a broken glass one of the men has picked up among the rubble and débris of this shattered town. Dark mauve and yellow pansies, pretty, innocent looking little things. “Pansies--that’s for thoughts.”