Yet I thoroughly enjoyed those eight hours, I remember. There were, I suppose, about eighty N.C.O.’s and men from “B” Company. I was in charge, with one other officer. We halted at a place whither the “cooker” had been previously despatched, and where the men had their tea. Luckily it was fine. The men sat about on lumps of trench-boards and coils of barbed wire, for the place was an “R.E. Dump,” where a large accumulation of R.E. stores of all description was to be found. I apologised to the R.E. officer for keeping him a few minutes while the men finished their tea; he, however, a second-lieutenant, was in no hurry whatever, it seemed, and waited about a quarter of an hour for us. Then I fell the men in, and they “drew tools,” so many men a pick, so many a shovel (the usual proportion is one pick, two shovels), and we splodged along through whitish clay of the stickiest calibre in the gathering twilight. An R.E. corporal and two R.E. privates had joined us mysteriously by now, as well as the second-lieutenant, and crossing H---- Street we plunged down into a communication trench, and started the long mazy grope. The R.E. corporal was guide. The trench was all paved with trench-mats, but these were not “laid,” only “shoved down” anyhow; consequently they wobbled, and one’s boot slipped off the side into squelch, rubbing the ankle. Continually came up the message from behind, “Lost touch, Sir!” This involved a wait--one, two minutes--until the “All-up” or “All-in” came up. (One hears it coming in a hoarse whisper, and starts before it actually arrives. Infinite patience is necessary. R.E. officers are sometimes eager to go ahead; but once lose the last ten men at night in an unknown trench, and it may take three hours to find them.) The other officer was bringing up the rear. At last we reached our destination, and the R.E. officer and myself told off the men to work along the trench. This particular work was clearing what is known as a “berm,” that is, the flat strip of ground between the edge of the trench and the thrown-up earth, each side of a C.T. (communication trench). When a trench is first dug, the earth is thrown up each side; the recent rains were, however, causing the trenches to crumble in everywhere, and the weight of the thrown-up earth was especially the cause of this. Consequently, if the earth were cleared away a yard on each side of the trench, and thrown further back, the trench would probably be saved from falling in to any serious extent, and the light labour of shovelling dry earth a yard or so back would be substituted for the heart-breaking toil of throwing sloppy mud or sticky clay out of a trench higher than yourself. [Illustration]