It is all indescribably wild now--Gun trench, Grab Alley, Big Willie, Hohenzollern and the rest, cement-coloured, or yellow with a withered prairie of weeds. Notices at various points indicate _chasse reservée_: the shooting rights are now reserved. Frenchmen with shot-guns and dogs prowl along the parapets, peppering the noisy partridges which they rouse up in scores. Decaying rifles lie in the trenches, rusty bayonets, and muddy shreds of belts and pouches. On the German side the inevitable litter of unexploded but sodden bombs; undo the metal protectors and you find the very string which caused them to explode has rotted in its case. No tourists turn up on these wild wastes. It is too terrible for them--and you cannot motor over innumerable pits. On Sunday October 3rd you can picture the survivors of Loos at "Divine Service" at Sailly la Bourse. On the evening of the Sunday they marched to Gun trench. The trench was so called because the enemy had a gun on it. Fifty yards of the centre the Germans held, and the British were in the trench both on the left and on the right of the enemy, and strove to bomb him out of it entirely. The gun was worked heavily, and shell after shell landed on parapet or parados scattering solid slag, ravaging chalk, burying men. The unburied were engaged all night digging out lost comrades and trench-repairing. It seems mere matter-of-fact when set down in dull print--but oh, the physical agonies of apprehension, the shuddering, the shattering of nerves physically under such conditions. It is easily understood how men were glad to be hit to get away and find peace. Death must at times have been eagerly desired and sought. It was called hell: it was hell. The new Kitchener divisions were thus not long in getting to the reality of war.