"Here I am in the trenches again, quite like old times, and quite in the swing again after the unsettling effect of coming home! You know I can't help laughing at things out here. The curious aspect of things sometimes comes and hits me, and I sit down and laugh (not insanely or hysterically, _bien entendu_; but I just can't help chuckling). It is so absurd, the reasons and causes that have drawn me to this particular and unlikely field in Belgium, and, having arrived here, that make me set about at once house-hunting--for all the world as if it was the most natural thing in life. And having selected my little house and arranged all my belongings in it, I regard it as home and spend a few days there. And then one morning my servant and I, we pack up everything once more and hoist them on to our backs and set off, staff in hand, like a pair of gipsies to another field a mile or so distant, and there make a new home.... "I was very loth to leave my front line dug-out, because I had arranged things to my liking--had moved the table so that it caught the light, and so on. It had a built-in table (which took a lot of moving), a chair and a sandbag bed. Quite small and snug. "But still--this new dug-out back here is quite nice. Large and roomy, with windows with bars in them (but no glass)--a proper square table on four legs--three chairs and a sandbag bed. So I am quite happy. The sandbag bed is apparently made as follows: Cover a portion of the floor, 6 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 6 inches, with a single layer of sandbags filled with earth. Over these place several layers of empty sandbags, and the bed is finished. If the hollows and lumps are carefully placed, the former in the middle and the latter at the head, the result is quite a success. Of course one sleeps in one's clothes covered by a coat and with an air pillow under one's head. "We have had a very gay time in the trenches. I think I told you how I saw a hostile aeroplane brought down on fire in our lines. That was on Sunday, and the official report says both pilots killed. On Monday I went down to a support trench to have meat tea and a chat with Holden and Ventris (two of C Company officers). At a quarter to ten there was a loud rumbling explosion and the dug-out we were in rocked for several seconds. The Germans had fired a mine about 60 feet in front of our trench to try to blow in some of our workings.