It was a most exciting little performance from start to finish, yet it put a terrific strain on every man who took part in it--load yourself up with more than a hundredweight of stuff and see what it feels like; then you will partly realise what we had to go through--and the excitement was by no means ended when we reached the garden in the darkness, because just as we were getting rid of the bandoliers a shell crashed into the house next to us and smashed it to smithereens, a lot of our chaps being fairly smothered in the flying bricks and rubbish. That _was_ a night, and one that I shall never forget. There seemed every prospect that we should be fairly mopped up, and when the order came for the N.C.O.’s to take back the men in parties we lost no time in returning, as best we could, to the trenches. Shelling was going on all the time, and just by way of giving a finish to the performance something like thirty star-shells burst together, making the dark night as light as day and giving the Germans a chance to plump more shells into us as we got back. This hurrying up with ammunition to the firing-line is only one of many such things that have been done as part of the day’s work by British soldiers at the front. About two nights afterwards these two Line battalions of which I speak were relieved, and we took over their trenches. There were no dug-outs, or any such protections; the trenches were simply breastworks, and we had a very bad time when the wet weather set in, as it did. When we took the trenches over they were in an unfinished state, and we set to work at once to complete them. One night, or rather about two o’clock in the morning, I was working on the top of the back parapet, with my head and shoulders showing, and half asleep, for I was dead tired. Suddenly the Germans sent up about fifty star-shells, which burst in the sky and made the darkness as light as day and showed us up as clearly as possible. Instantly the enemy opened rapid fire on our trenches and swept us with machine-guns, the bullets whistling over the parapets. I was roused as swiftly as if the réveillé had sounded--perhaps faster, because there are no whizzing bullets when the bugles blow--and I well remember that I wriggled and rolled sideways. I knew that the darkness had become as light as daytime and that the German fire was peppering us, and that the best thing to do was to get out of it as rapidly as I could. So I fell flat, then lay still, then rolled into a trench as best I could. I remember--so soon do we get accustomed to war--that one of our chaps growled, “Why don’t you go a bit farther, then you could go through an opening!” Fancy a chap picking and choosing a landing-place when he was clearing out from shell-fire! I knew that in rolling and falling like this there was a risk of landing on top of a fixed bayonet, as some of our fellows did, but I cheerfully took that chance in my eagerness to get under cover.