This was the distribution of the company in the front line. Every morning from 9 to 12 all men not on sentry worked at repairing and improving the trenches; and the same for four hours during the night. Work done to strengthen the parapet can only be done by night. Every night wire was put out. Every night a patrol went out. Every day one “stood to” arms for an hour before dawn, and an hour after dusk. And day and night there was an intermittent stinging and buzzing of black-winged instruments between the opposing trenches. Of shells I have already spoken; next in deadliness were rifle-grenades, which are bombs with a rod attachment that is put down the barrel of an ordinary rifle. Four of these rifles are stood in a rack fixed to the ground, and fired by a string from a few yards away, at a very high trajectory. They are a very deadly weapon, as you cannot see them dropping on to you. Then there is a multiform genus called “trench-mortar,” being projectiles of all kinds and shapes lobbed over from close range. The canister was the most loathed. It was simply a tin oil-can, the size of a lady’s muff (large); one heard a thud, and watched the beast rising, rising, then stationary, it seemed, in mid-air, and then come toppling down, down, down on top of one with a crash--three seconds’ silence--and then a most colossal explosion, blowing everything in its vicinity to atoms. These canisters were loathed by the men with a most personal and intense aversion. Yet they were really not nearly so dangerous as rifle-grenades, as one had time to dodge them very often, unless enfiladed in a communication trench. They were, moreover, very local in their effects. A shell has splinters that spread far and wide; a trench-mortar is a clumsy monster with a thin skin, no splinters, and an abominable, noisy, vulgar way of making the most of itself. “Sausages” were another but milder form of the vulgar trench-mortar; aerial torpedoes were daintier people with wings, who looked so cherubic as they came sailing over, that one almost forgot their deadly stinging powers; they, too, were a species of trench-mortar. It is natural to write lightly of these things; yet they were no light matters. They were the instruments of death that took their daily toll of lives. In this chapter describing the system and routine of ordinary trench warfare, I have tried to prepare the canvas for several pictures I have drawn in bold bare lines; now I am putting in a wash of colour, the atmosphere of Death.