This is a very idle life except for night-digging on the reserve line. By day there is nothing to do. We can’t drill because it is too near the German lines, and there is no fortification work to be done in the village. To-day two spies were shot. A civilian who had hung on in a cellar and had, apparently, been flashing news, and a German soldier disguised as an R.E. corporal who was found tampering with the telephone wires. We officers spend a lot of time practising revolver-shooting. Jenkins brought out a beautiful target from the only undestroyed living-room in our billet area. It was a glass case full of artificial fruit and flowers, so we put it up on a post at fifty yards range. He said: ‘I’ve always wanted to smash one of these damn things. My aunt had one. It’s the sort of thing that _would_ survive an intense bombardment.’ For a moment I felt a tender impulse to rescue it. But I smothered it. So we had five shots each, in turn. Nobody could hit it. So at last we went up to within twenty yards of it and fired a volley. Someone hit the post and that knocked it off into the grass. Jenkins said: ‘Damn the thing, it must be bewitched. Let’s take it back.’ The glass was unbroken, but some of the fruit had come loose. Walker said: ‘No, it’s in pain; we must put it out of its suffering.’ He gave it the _coup de gracê_ from close quarters. There is an old Norman church here, very much broken. What is left of the tower is used as a forward observation post by the artillery. I counted eight unexploded shells sticking into it. I went in with Jenkins; the floor was littered with rubbish, broken masonry, smashed chairs, ripped canvas pictures (some of them look several hundreds of years old), bits of images and crucifixes, muddied church vestments rotting in what was once the vestry. Only a few pieces of stained glass remained fixed in the edges of the windows. I climbed up by way of the altar to the east window and found a piece about the size of a plate. I gave it to Jenkins. ‘Souvenir,’ I said. When he held it up to the light it was St. Peter’s hand with the keys of heaven; medieval glass. ‘I’m sending this home,’ he said. As we went out we met two men of the Munsters. They were Irish Catholics. They thought it sacrilegious for Jenkins to be taking the glass away. One of them said: ‘Shouldn’t take that, sir; it will bring you no luck.’[3] Walker was ragging Dunn this evening. ‘I believe you’ll be sorry when the war’s over, skipper. Your occupation will be gone and you’ll have to go back on the square at the depot for six months and learn how to form fours regimentally. You missed that little part of the show when you left Sandhurst and came straight here. You’ll be a full colonel by then, of course. I’ll give the sergeant-major half a crown to make you really sweat. I’ll be standing in civvies at the barrack-gate laughing at you.’