28_th May_.—In trenches among the Cuinchy brick-stacks. Not my idea of trenches. There has been a lot of fighting hereabouts. The trenches have made themselves rather than been made, and run inconsequently in and out of the big thirty-foot high stacks of brick; it is most confusing. The parapet of one of the trenches which we do not occupy is built up with ammunition-boxes and corpses. Everything here is wet and smelly. The lines are very close. The Germans have half the brick-stacks and we have the other half. Each side snipes down from the top of its brick-stacks into the other’s trenches. This is also a great place for rifle-grenades and trench-mortars. We can’t reply properly to these; we have only a meagre supply of rifle-grenades and nothing to equal the German sausage mortar bomb. This morning about breakfast time, just as I came out of my dug-out, a rifle-grenade landed within six feet of me. For some reason, instead of falling on its head and exploding, it landed with its stick in the wet clay and stood there looking at me. They are difficult to see coming; they are shot from a rifle, with its butt on the ground, tilted, and go up a long way before they turn over and come down. I can’t understand why this particular rifle-grenade fell as it did; the chances were impossibly against it. [Illustration: THE BRICKSTACKS AT GIVENCHY _Copyright Imperial War Museum._] Sausages are easy to see and dodge, but they make a terrible noise when they drop. We have had about ten casualties in our company to-day from them. I find that I have extraordinarily quick reactions to danger; but every one gets like that. We can sort out all the different explosions and disregard all the ones that don’t concern us—the artillery duel, machine-gun fire at the next company to us, desultory rifle-fire. But the faint plop! of the mortar that sends off the sausage or the muffled rifle noise when a grenade is fired, we pick out at once. The men are much afraid, yet always joking. The company sergeant-major stands behind Number Eleven brick-stack and shoots at the sausages with a rifle as they come over; trying to explode them in the air. He says that it’s better than pigeon-shooting. He hasn’t hit one yet. Last night a lot of stuff was flying about, including shrapnel. I heard one shell whish-whishing towards me. I dropped flat. It burst just over the trench. My ears sang as though there were gnats in them and a bright scarlet light shone over everything. My shoulder was twisted in falling and I thought I had been hit, but I hadn’t been. The vibration made my chest sing, too, in a curious way, and I lost my sense of equilibrium. I was much ashamed when the sergeant-major came along the trench and found me on all fours, because I couldn’t stand up straight. It was at a place where ‘Petticoat Lane’ runs into ‘Lowndes Square.’