Here follows an appreciation, compiled at first-hand, of their surroundings, and the methods by which they kept themselves more or less dry. “Drains are a very difficult problem as there is probably only a fall of three feet in as many miles behind the line. The system is that the men drain the water in the actual trenches or redoubts into a drain slightly in rear. Then there are a number of drains, two or three per company-area, running straight back. Three men are told off to these and do nothing but patrol them, deepening and clearing where necessary.... From about two hundred yards in rear, the R.E. take and run off the water by larger drains and ditches already in existence into a river some miles in rear. At least that is the theory. The line is now wonderfully dry to live in as the profuse supply of trench-boards has made an enormous difference. Thus men can walk dry-shod up Winchester Street, our main communication-trench, on a path of floor-boards built up on piles over, perhaps, three feet of water. Of course, it hits both ways, as you are taken out of the water, but also out of the ground above your waist, and parapets must be built accordingly.... The front line, which is also the only one, as the labour of keeping it habitable absorbs every available man, is composed of a sand-bag redoubt about seven or eight feet high, and very thick. It is recessed and traversed. About ten or fifteen yards in rear runs the ‘traffic trench,’ a boarded path which sometimes runs along the top of black slime, and sometimes turns into a bridge on piles over smelly ponds. Between the redoubt and traffic-trench, rising out of slime, are a weird collection of hovels about three feet high, of sand-bags and tin. They are the local equivalents of ‘dug-outs’—cover from rain but not from shells. Everywhere there are rats.” Having added gas to their local responsibilities, they suffered from the enthusiasms of the specialists attached to, and generals who believed in, the filthy weapon. As soon as possible after the cylinders, which they feared and treated with the greatest respect, were in position, all the talk was of a real and poisonous gas-attack. They were told on the 19th December that such a one would be launched by them on the first night the wind should favour it, and that their patrols would specially reconnoitre the ground that, by the blessing of fortune, the gas would waft across. Then the moon shone viciously and all special patrols were ordered off.