"Two of our platoons went digging last night. Mine was one. We left here about eight o'clock, and I got back at 1 a.m., and then I sat up with another subaltern (Fletcher) after I had had some supper until the other man (Thomas) had come in and eaten. We went to bed at 3 a.m. Breakfast at nine this morning, and we are _resting_. However, I am going to have an absolutely slack day to-day. A bath too, if I can manage it.... "Last night the moon got up very late and was quite useless. They fire more when there is no light, they get scared--at least uneasy; they fire off 'Very' lights constantly, and let off volleys. We lie absolutely flat while this goes on. It is a funny sight; the men look like a row of starfish!" "_Tuesday, 11 May 1915, 9.15 a.m._ (_really Wednesday the_ 12_th. I had got wrong_) "We are within view of a well-known place [no doubt Ypres.--O. J. L.], and the place has been on fire in three or four places for about two days, and is still going strong. A magnificent spectacle at night. The place is, I believe, a city of ruins and dead, and there is probably no one to put a fire out. Probably, too, a fire is rather a good thing than otherwise; the place must be terribly in need of purifying. "I was awfully interested in father's dream.[3] Your letter is dated the 8th, and you say that the other night he dreamt that I was in the thick of the fighting, but that they were taking care of me from the other side. "Well, I don't know about 'the thick of the fighting,' but I have been through what I can only describe as a hell of a shelling with shrapnel. My diary tells me it was on the 7th, at about 10.15 a.m. Our Company were ordered forward from one set of dug-outs to others nearer the firing line, and the formation adopted was platoons in single file, with intervals between. That is, four columns of about fifty men each, in single file, with about 20 to 50 yards between each column. I was the third platoon, though I was not with my own but with No. 9. Fletcher brought up the last one, thus:-- [Illustration] (My platoon is No. 11.--No. 9's platoon commander, Laws, is in England on sick leave, as his nerves are all wrong.)