Our tunnellers were always mining and we would see them by day and night disappearing into mysterious holes in the ground, and it was only when Messines Ridge disappeared in fine dust that we understood that their groping in underground passages was not in vain. They would sometimes tell us exciting tales of fights in the dark with picks against enemy miners; and now and again we would be roused by explosions when one side blew in on the other and formed a new crater in No Man's Land. With their instruments our miners discovered that the head of one of the enemy galleries was under the headquarters dugout of the English regiment on our right. I went along to inform them. With excitement in my voice I said to the officer in charge: "Do you know that there is a mine under here?" "Bai Jove, how jolly interesting! Come and have a drink." I said: "Not in here, thank you." "Why? It won't go off to-day," he said. "Anyway, we are being relieved to-morrow, so it won't worry us, but we'll be sure and leave word for the other blighters." There was a dugout in our own sector in which were heard mysterious tappings, but though we had an experienced miner sleep in it he reported that the sounds were not those of mining operations. Maybe it was the rats, but we gave that dugout a wide berth, as some one suggested that it was haunted, and even in the trenches, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know! We managed to have a good deal of comfort in these trenches, all things considered. We even rigged up hot baths in our second line. The men were able every second day to have a hot bath, get clean underclothing, and have a red-hot iron passed over their uniforms, which was the only effective method I have known of keeping us reasonably free from body-vermin. These baths turned us out like new men, as the Australian craves his daily shower. I doubt if there are any troops in the world who take such pains for cleanliness. Wherever we camp we rig up our shower-baths as a first essential, and in some of the French villages the natives would gather round these Hessian enclosed booths staring at the bare legs showing beneath and jabbering excitedly about the madness of these people who were so dirty that they needed a bath every day.