24_th June_. —We are billeted in the cellars of Vermelles, which was taken and re-taken eight times last October. There is not a single house undamaged in the place. I suppose it once had two or three thousand inhabitants. It is beautiful now in a fantastic way. We came up two nights ago; there was a moon shining behind the houses and the shells had broken up all the hard lines. Next morning we found the deserted gardens of the town very pleasant to walk about in; they are quite overgrown and flowers have seeded themselves about wildly. Red cabbages and roses and madonna lilies are the chief ornaments. There is one garden with currant bushes in it. I and the company sergeant-major started eating along the line towards each other without noticing each other. When we did, we both remembered our dignity, he as a company sergeant-major and I as an officer. He saluted, I asknowledged the salute, we both walked away. After a minute or two we both came back hoping the coast was clear and again, after an exchange of salutes, had to leave the currants and pretend that we were merely admiring the flowers. I don’t quite know why I was feeling like that. The company sergeant-major was a regular and it was natural in him, and I suppose that it was courtesy to his scruples that made me stop. Anyhow, along came a couple of privates and stripped the bushes clean. This afternoon we had a cricket match, officers versus sergeants, in an enclosure between some houses out of observation from the enemy. The front line is perhaps three quarters of a mile away. I made top score, twenty-four; the bat was a bit of a rafter, the ball was a piece of rag tied round with string, and the wicket was a parrot cage with the grisly remains of a parrot inside. It had evidently died of starvation when the French evacuated the town. The corpse was perfectly clean and dry and I recalled a verse of Skelton’s: Parrot is a fair bird for a ladie. God of His goodness him framed and wrought. When parrot is dead he doth not putrify, Yea, all things mortal shall turn unto nought Save mannës soul which Christ so dear bought, That never can die, nor never die shall. Make much of parrot, that popajay royal. The match was broken up suddenly by machine-gun fire. It was not aimed at us; the Germans were shooting at one of our aeroplanes and the bullets falling down from a great height had a penetrative power greater than an ordinary spent bullet.