No reply, no groans; everyone is there, flat, stretched out. We wait flat in the grass and the mud until the star shells fall, and as soon as one has, and before the following one has scaled through space and lighted it with its dim light, we jump into the hole which the fatigue party of yesterday dug. But the tools aren’t idle, although we guess rather than hear the blows of the pick digging in the deep rich earth and the shovelers throwing it out as far on the parapet as possible so as not to form a salient. We dig for hours without interruption, lowering our heads in the holes as the star shells go up, and taking up our tasks as soon as it is dark again. The enemy has discovered the time of our fatigue parties, and to-morrow it will know the exact position of our work, so that it will be somewhat uncomfortable to continue. It must be finished to-night. A company of Territorials is stretching barbed wire on our right. Between each star shell we can hear the hammering of the sledges against the stakes, the strain of the tension on the wire, and when the traitorous light shines again these wonderful workers don’t even hide. They remain hanging on the barbed wire, motionless and disjointed like corpses. They look so much like them that the enemy doesn’t even fire, as he feels certain that he has annihilated this gang which heroically continues its gigantic task. “Look!... they’re like statues.” “One would think it was a party ... there are the lights and the orchestra.” The time for supplying the company in the lines comes. The men of the field kitchens come by groups of three or four from the trenches just behind us. The first two have a long rod on their shoulders and rolls of bread on this. Others carry in canvas pails and kettles come from nowhere the coveted wine and the aromatic brandy. Others bend under the weight of pots which hold lumpy black bean soup, which splashes out at every jolt in the path. It is already cold and greasy. Finally, the mess corporal reaches the end of his trip and draws out of his sack the desserts bought with the mess balance and the commissions given to him the day before by the men in the trenches. The pockets of his jackets are full of letters he has just received from the officer with the mail, and which he delivers to the men who have been waiting for them hungrily. When he gets as far as the fatigue party he stops and hesitates. He must go over a space of fifty yards, absolutely exposed, to the edge of a group of trees where there is a first-line trench taken from the Boches in the last attack and not yet connected with the communication trench. He has reason for his hesitation, for the last two days the Boche trench on our left has been firing on it heavily.