June 1st. Working all day on emplacements, putting headcover on, &c. This evening, about six o'clock, I was called upon to reply to German trench mortars, but just as we had reached the bottom of the communication, they opened gun fire on the communication trench, wounding several men, while we lay at the bottom of the trench, while they whizzed over in sort of sheets of shells. They soon quieted, but one burst was enough. I went down to the front line about 10-0 to look round, and coming back they were unpleasant again--big stuff too--but to our left. The shells are something terrific here; I think it is one of the hottest parts of the line. June 2nd. Working all day on emplacements. In the evening we were called upon to retaliate for German mortars, and pumped hell into them for a few minutes (excuse the word, it is the only one I can think of), and soon shut them up. I was relieved by Carroll. June 3rd. Went up to the trenches, to see how the emplacements were getting on, with Kitty. In the evening the Tyneside Scottish relieved us, going up to the trenches at 2-0 a.m. instead of 2 p.m. We had an awful crush of them in our mess for several hours, and I had great difficulty in pushing them off up to the trenches. I took them there just to be in time for a terrific bombardment on the trenches, whilst the Germans tried unsuccessfully to raid our trenches. They used tear gas on us, sent over in shells, and it makes you weep. When I returned they were shelling near our billet, and we had to spend the whole of the rest of the night in the cellars, and only got to our bed at about 6-0 in the morning. June 4th. Carroll and Brand went back to rest with the two new batteries, and Kitty and I remained in reserve, as they wanted us to take part in a raid that we were going to do, and, though our own brigade was in rest, our batteries were selected as a compliment to take part in the raid, which we learned was to come off on Monday, June 5th, so we tried to go to bed early on Sunday after our troublous Saturday night. However, we learnt that the division on our right was doing a raid, and the Bosche started retaliating on Albert, the town we were in, so we had to spend another night in the cellars.