“The mining is a great mystery to me at present. One part of the trench is only patrolled, as the Boche may ‘blow’ there at any moment. I must say it is an uncomfortable feeling, this liability to sudden projection skywards! The first night I had a sort of nightmare all the time, and kept waking up, and thinking about a mine going up under one. The second night I was too tired to have nightmares. The rats _swarm_. I woke up last night, and saw one sitting on Edwards, licking its whiskers. Then it ran on to the box by the candle. It was a pretty brown fellow, rather attractive, I thought. I felt no repulsion whatever at sight of it.... The front trenches are a _maze_. I cannot disentangle all the loops and saps; and now we are cut off from ‘C,’ as the front trench is all blown in; one has to have a connecting patrol that goes viâ Rue Albert. A very weird affair. The only consolation is that the Boche would be _more_ lost if he got in! I cannot help feeling that ‘B’ company has been very lucky. We were in Maple Redoubt, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; everything was quite quiet with us, but ‘D’ had seven casualties in the front trench. On Friday we relieved ‘A,’ and all Saturday the enemy bombarded a spot just behind our company’s left, putting over 4·2’s and canisters all day long from 9.0 a.m. onwards, and absolutely smashing up our trenches there. Then Trafalgar Square has been rather a hot shop: two of our own whizz-bangs fell short there, and several rifle grenades fell _very_ close--also, splinters of the 4·2’s came humming round, ending with little plops quite close. O’Brien picked up a large splinter that fell in the trench right outside the dug-out. Again, at ‘stand-down,’ when Dixon, Clark, Edwards, and I were standing talking together at the top of 76 Street, two canisters fell most alarmingly near us, about ten yards behind, covering us with dirt. Yet we have not had a single casualty. To-day we were to have been relieved by the Manchesters at midday, but this morning at ‘stand to’ we heard the time had been altered to 8.0 a.m. ‘B’ was duly relieved, and No. 5 Platoon had just changed gum-boots, while 6, 7, and 8 were sitting at the corner of Maple Redoubt enthralled in the same process, when over came two canisters, one smashing in Old Kent Road, down which we had just come, and the other falling right into an ‘A’ Company dug-out, twenty yards to my left, killing two men and wounding three others, one probably mortally. And now I have just had the news that the Manchester have had twenty-three casualties to-day, including three officers, their R.S.M., and a company sergeant-major.” * * * * *