horrors of this period of the war are well described by Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, who served on shore as a midshipman in one of the Naval brigades. “In the early part of the winter the battalions at the front were generally on duty two nights out of three, and later, every alternate night. The life of the rank and file was thus spent:--The men were mustered carrying great-coat and blanket, just before dusk, and marched through a sea of mud into the trenches. These were cut up by deep holes from which boulders and stones had been taken, and into these holes on dark nights, the men often fell. When the soldier reached his position, he had to sit with his back to the parapet, and his feet drawn up close under his body to allow others to pass along the four-feet-wide trench. If he was not detailed for a working party, nor for piquet in the trenches or in advance of them, he might lie down, resting as best he could, in a wet ditch. Assuming that the soldier was not on piquet, and that there was no alarm--and these were of frequent occurrence--he could, after the working parties and their reliefs had ceased to move about the trenches, repose till daylight, when he marched back to camp, and after a few hours’ rest had to carry a load of some kind. “The comparative repose enjoyed by those men who were required only as a guard, or reserve in the trenches, was very different to the condition of those who were employed from 200 to 300 yards in advance of our works, often within conversational distance of the opposing sentries. The reliefs for the sentries could snatch a dog’s sleep for four hours out of six, hoping their comrades would by remaining on the alert give them time to jump up ere the enemy was on them; but for the two hours that each man was out near the enemy, the strain on the nervous system would have been great even to a robust, well-fed man. These sentries had necessarily to stand absolutely still, silent and watchful, and as the severity of the weather became more and more marked, numbers of men whose frames were weakened by want of adequate nutritious food, were found in the morning frost-bitten and unable to move. One battalion which landed nearly 900 strong early in November, was actually in the trenches six nights out of seven, and then became so reduced, not only in numbers,[163] but also in the men’s bodily strength, that it was unable for some time to go there again.