As the spring advanced the trenches lost a great deal of their barren unloveliness. What had been mud or greyish-looking grass now became a deep and luxuriant carpet of bright fresh green, with many a wild flower peeping out here and there. The trees, which so far had been but gaunt skeletons, began to cover their nakedness with fresh foliage. The sides of Gloucester Avenue were gay with poppies and white daisies; Sussex Avenue became an ideal country footpath, dotted with may-trees; and even that forbidding-looking spot the Orchard assumed quite a cheerful aspect. Round Cambridge House the lilacs blossomed out, both purple and white. Roses bloomed in the old gardens near Tissage Dump, and later on a small crop of strawberries and currants was gathered there. A stroll round the line in the early morning was a real pleasure. Just as the dawn was breaking you could wander anywhere. Not a shot would be fired and the guns were silent. As the sun climbed higher in the heavens, the pleasant smell of fresh, moist earth filled the nostrils, instead of the stale stench of which one had grown so sick. Dew-spangled grasses and fern overhanging the trench brushed your face as you passed along. In the rapidly clearing mist that heralded the hot day even the ugliest features of the line seemed to take on a certain softening outline, a certain grace in harmony with the countryside. High over No Man's Land you could see the fluttering lark, and all the air was resonant with its trilling notes. The call of the cuckoo sounded from the trees, and the chatter of sparrows and finches in the overgrown hedges filled the air with a merry sound, while but a few hours previously the nightingale had been pouring out its full-throated melody. "Oh, to be in England now that April's here!" How we re-echoed Browning's wish, with the substitution for "April" of the month of June, at which we had now arrived! How true the words seemed, how deep their significance! Beautiful as Nature was around us, rejoiced as we were at this delightful contrast to the hideousness of strife, yet it increased the bitterness and made one feel more keenly than ever the loathsome misery of war. How one pictured to oneself the peaceful beauty of the English countryside, so like this in outward appearance, and yet so different in reality! How one longed for the war to be over, to wander once more in the fields on a summer's morn, with the black clouds of war cleared away for good, and not merely lifted for a few precious moments! Boom! The "morning hate" has begun. With a start we come back from our pleasant dreams. Another stifling day is before us, and the never-ending struggle with its monotony, its destruction, its every detestable feature, claims us once more for its own.