November brought with it a week of steady rain, and we knew the winter months were at hand. In less than two weeks our trenches, once the pride of the division, were a series of collapsed heaps where the sandbag walls had been undermined by the seepage of water. But we suffered nothing like the discomforts endured by the British troops during the previous winter. Rubber boots reaching to the thigh were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench. Pumps were issued, but the mud was too thick to pump; our only hope lay in drainage, and by the time proper drains were constructed the mud was too thick to run, even though we were on a hill top. [Illustration: AFTER A FEW SHELLS AND A WEEK'S RAIN.] So we pumped and drained and built new sandbag walls all winter, and as fast as one portion of our line was renewed another portion would collapse, or, more disheartening still, be shelled to bits by the big "minenwerfer." This was a German gun brought up to this front to counteract our trench mortar. Throwing a shell about six inches in diameter of high explosive, it could in three bursts do more damage than a whole company could repair in a night. And regularly twice a week three shells were dropped along Delta Road, a communication trench forming the third side of the little salient. The effect of the "minenwerfer" was very local, however, owing to the thinness of the shell wall, but such men as it killed were not a pretty sight. Fortunately, too, the shells could be seen both by day and night, and rose to such a height before dropping that men could scamper for shelter from the threatened spot. But no dug-out could withstand its explosion, and a series of craters, eight or ten feet in depth and twelve feet in diameter, marked the "minenwerfer's" work. Every battery that covered our area had, by the time winter was over, reported they had silenced "Minnie," but when we left that area months later she was still doing business at the old stand. To relieve the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps organised a series of night raids on the German trenches. The first, and most brilliant, of these was conducted by the 5th and 7th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade on a barricade or forward trench that had been constructed by the enemy near our old position opposite the Petite Douve Farm. This raid was made on a villainous night blacker than Egypt during the plagues and raining as only Flanders can. With faces blackened with charcoal, the raiding parties crept out to the enemy wire and cut it strand by strand, a process lasting several hours. During this time the cooks of one of the battalions carried out pannikins of hot tea to the men who were lying in the mud hacking at the wire.