Transport is rattling up and down the street--guns, limbers, G.S. wagons, water-carts, God knows what, and there are men marching along, mud-caked, weary, straggling, clinging fast to some German souvenir as they come one way; jaunty, swinging, clean, with bands a-blowing as they go the other. It is a dull grey day. There is “something doing” up the line. I can hear the artillery, that ceaseless artillery, pounding and hammering, and watch the scout aeroplanes, dim grey hawks in the distance, from the windows of the room above--the broken-down room with the plasterless ceiling, and the clothes scattered all over the floor. “Pansies--that’s for thoughts.” The regiment is up yonder--the finest regiment God ever made. They are wallowing in the wet, sticky mud of the trenches they have dug themselves into, what is left of them. They are watching and waiting, always watching and waiting for the enemy to attack. And they are being bombarded steadily, pitilessly, without cessation. Some will be leaning against the parapet, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, some will be watching, some smoking, if they have got any smokes left. I know them. Until the spirit leaves their bodies they will grin and fight, fight and grin, but always “Carry On.” Last night they went up to relieve the --th, after they had just come out of the line, and were themselves due to be relieved. Overdue, in fact, but the General knew that he could rely on them, knew that THEY would never give way, while there was a man left to fire a rifle. So he used them--as they have always been used, and as they always will be--to hold the line in adversity, to take the line when no one else could take it. We have been almost wiped out five times, but the old spirit still lives, the Spirit of our mighty dead. There are always enough “old men” left, even though they number but a score, with whom to leaven the lump of raw, green rookies that come to us, and to turn them into soldiers worthy of the Regiment. Dark mauve pansies. I knew all the old soldiers of the Brigade, I have fought with them, shaken hands with them afterwards--those who survived--mourned with them our pals who were gone--buried many a one of them. This time I am out of it. Alone with the pansies ... and my thoughts. Thomson was killed last night; Greaves, Nicholson, Townley, between then and now. Nearly all the rest are wounded. Those who come back will talk of this fight, they will speak of hours and events of which I shall know nothing. For the first time I shall be on the outer fringe, mute ... with only ears to hear, and no heart to speak.