You would be surprised at the amount of waste that goes on in trenches. Ration biscuits are in general use as fuel for boiling up dixies, because fuel is scarce. Our machine-gun crews boil their hot water by firing off belt after belt of machine-gun ammunition at no particular target, just generally spraying the German line. After several pounds’ worth of ammunition has been used, the water in the guns—they are water-cooled—begins to boil. They say they make German ration and carrying parties behind the line pay for their early-morning cup of tea. But the real charge will be on income-tax after the war. 24_th May_.—To-morrow we return to trenches. The men are pessimistic but cheerful. They all talk about getting a ‘cushy’ one to send them back to ‘Blitey.’ Blitey is, it seems, Hindustani for ‘home.’ My servant, Fry, who works in a paper-bag factory at Cardiff in civil life, has been telling me stories about cushy ones. Here are two of them. ‘A bloke in the Munsters once wanted a cushy, so he waves his hand above the parapet to catch Fritz’s attention. Nothing doing. He waves his arms about for a couple of minutes. Nothing doing, not a shot. He puts his elbows on the fire-step, hoists his body upside down and waves his legs about till he get blood to the head. Not a shot did old Fritz fire. “Oh,” says the Munster man, “I don’t believe there’s a damn squarehead there. Where’s the German army to?” He has a peek over the top—crack! he gets it in the head. Finee.’ Another story: ‘Bloke in the Camerons wanted a cushy bad. Fed up and far from home, he was. He puts his hand over the top and gets his trigger finger taken off, and two more beside. That done the trick. He comes laughing through our lines by the old boutillery. “See, lads,” he says, “I’m aff to bony Scotland. Is it na a beauty?” But on the way down the trench to the dressing-station he forgets to stoop low where the old sniper was working. _He_ gets it through the head too. Finee. We laugh fit to die.’