Beyond Company Headquarters the communication trench showed the strongest inclination to close in. It was extremely narrow, and but for the overhead struts would very soon have become impassable. Newburn Lane led off to the left, certainly more of a lane than a trench, through which you could reach the Orchard, a regular target for German gunners, and a place to be avoided at certain times of the day. Farther down the communication trench was a slit on the left where Light Trench Mortar Battery men lived. Just below here the trench suddenly came to an end, and you crossed a little stream running along a diminutive valley. The tram line also came in sight, wandering away along an old road through tangled bushes and weeds to the front line. It was badly smashed in places, and was never used as far forward as this. The trench began again up the far side of the tiny valley--London Road, as it was now called--and here stood two graves marking the resting-place of two unknown soldiers. The going was sticky and the trench much battered. Later on grass and green things generally were conspicuous on either side of the trench, but now everything looked bare and muddy--just yellow clay, shell-holes, mud banks, and trenches more or less derelict. Suddenly you heard voices, and without quite realizing it you found you were in the front line. A broad breastwork formed the means of defence, occasional bays being held, but the majority being unoccupied and full of loose barbed wire. Everything betokened the effects of shell fire where men were too few to do more than just repair their own particular posts. Derelict "bivvies," odd broken duck-boards half covered with slime, sheets of corrugated iron riddled with holes, bits of old ground sheets, and fragments of equipment, lay about in all directions. Everything presented that damp, yellow aspect peculiar to clay soil. The traverses, sodden with water, were bursting down the hurdles or wire netting with which they were revetted, while the empty bays were falling in of their own accord, or presented a crushed and crumbling appearance, the result of the direct burst of a shell or "minnie."