The officer decided that it was. The men worked away with a will, and quickly replaced the earth in the hollow of the trench wall from which it had been blown. Again we trudged on. The flies were beginning to annoy us once more. I put on a couple of cigarettes. All the men had ransacked odds and ends from their pockets, and the result was a line of men smoking as hard as they could, and enveloped in a haze of bluish white smoke. But the flies refused to budge. Smoke had no effect on them, and I'm inclined to think that nothing short of a 5.9 would do the trick. Not until we were out in the open were we free from them. On two further occasions I tried to enter Trones Wood, and both times the conditions were if anything worse. The merest sign of a camera put up over a parapet would have instantly brought a host of shells clattering round; therefore, on the third try, I decided to abandon the trip until a later date. But those attempts will always remain in my memory as a ghastly nightmare. The essence of death and destruction, and all that it means, was horribly visible everywhere. I have been there since. I reached the place just before the final cleansing, and brother Fritz, just to let us know that he existed, and that he had a spite against us, persisted in flinging his shrapnel around, thereby keeping me well on the run. He did not give me the slightest chance to get pictures, nor to meditate on the surroundings; in fact the only meditation I indulged in was to wonder whether the next shrapnel bullet would strike my helmet plumb on the top or glance off the rim. Then thinking of George Grave's remark, I called Fritz a "nasty person," with a few extra additions culled from the "trench dictionary." Being a fine night I decided to stay in the vicinity. An officer of a pioneer battalion kindly offered me a share of his dug-out--one of Fritz's cast-offs. I gladly accepted, and over a cup--or rather a tin--of tea, we exchanged views on various subjects. About ten o'clock I went above to terra firma and watched the shells bursting over the German lines. Myriads of star-shells or Verey lights shot high in the sky, lighting up the whole country-side like day. The sight was wonderful, and silhouetted against the flashes I could see countless bodies of men tramping on their way like silent phantoms. Here and there I watched a shell burst. I could see and hear that it had dropped into a section of those men, adding to the number of that great army of heroes who had already "gone West." But into those gaps, through which the blasting shells had torn their way, stepped other men. A sharp word of command was rapped out, then on again to take up their battle position, leaving the dead behind to be reverently buried on the morrow. The wounded were brought away by the stretcher-bearers, and as one lot passed me I heard a voice from the darkness murmur, "Bill, it's a blighty."