Sometimes we forgot it in the interest of the present activity; sometimes we saw it face to face, without a qualm; but always it was there with its relentless overhanging presence, dulling our spirits, wearing out our lives. The papers are always full of Tommy smiling: Bairnsfather has immortalised his indomitable humour. Yes, it is true. We laugh, we smile. But for an hour of laughter, there are how many hours of weariness, strain, and grim agony! It is great that Tommy’s laughter has been immortalised; but do not forget that its greatness lies in this, that it was uttered beneath the canopy of ever-impending Death. CHAPTER VII MORE FIRST IMPRESSIONS It must not be imagined that I at once grasped all the essential details of our trench system, as I have tried to put them concisely in the preceding chapter. On the contrary, it was only very gradually that I accumulated my intimate knowledge of our maze of trenches, only by degrees that I learnt the lie of the land, and only by personal patrolling that I learnt the interior economy of the craters. At first the front line, with its loops and bombing-posts, and portions “patrolled only,” its sand-bag dumps, its unexpected visions of R.E.’s scurrying like bolted rabbits from mine-shafts, its sudden jerk round a corner that brought you in full view of the German parapet across a crater that made you gaze fascinated several seconds before you realised that you should be stooping low, as here was a bad bit of trench that wanted deepening _at once_ and had not been cleared properly after being blown in last night--all this, I say, was at first a most perplexing labyrinth. It was only gradually that I solved its mysteries, and discovered an order in its complexity. I will give a few more extracts from my diary, some of which seem to me now delightfully naïve! Here they are, though. * * * * * “2nd Feb., 1916. In the trenches. Everything very quiet. We are in support, in a place called Maple Redoubt, on the reverse slope of a big ridge. Good dug-outs (_sic_), and a view behind, over a big expanse of chalk-downs, which is most exhilarating. A day with blue sky and a tingle of frost. Being on the reverse slope, you can walk about anywhere, and so can see everything. Have just been up in the front trenches, which are over the ridge, and a regular, or rather very irregular, rabbit-warren. The Boche generally only about thirty to forty yards away. The trenches are _dry_, that is the glorious thing. DRY. Just off to pow-wow to the new members of my platoon.” * * * * * Here I will merely remark that the “good” dug-out in which we were living was blown in by a 4·2 shell exactly four days later, killing one officer and wounding the other two badly. With regard to the state of the trenches, it was dry weather, and “when they were dry they were dry, and when they were wet they were wet!” * * * * *