And while they worked, Headquarters were “briefly but accurately” shelled with whizz-bangs. On the 11th February the pace quickened a little. There was mining along that front on both sides, and our miners from two mines had reported they had heard work going on over their heads only a hundred and twenty yards out from our own parapets. It might signify that the enemy were working on “Russian saps”—shallow mines, almost like mole-runs, designed to bring a storming party right up to our parapets under cover. The miners were not loved for their theories, for at midnight along the whole Battalion front, pairs of unhappy men had to lie out on ground-sheets listening for any sound of subterranean picks. The proceedings, it is recorded, somewhat resembled a girls’ school going to bed, and the men said that all any one got out of the manœuvres was “blashts of ear-ache.” But, as the Diary observes, if there were any mining on hand, the Germans would naturally knock off through the quietest hours of the twenty-four. In some ways it was a more enterprising enemy than round the Red House, and they felt, rather than saw, that there were patrols wandering about No Man’s Land at unseemly hours. So the Battalion sent forth a couple of Lewis-gunners with their weapon, two bombers with their bombs, and one telephonist complete with field telephones. These, cheered by hot drinks, lay up a hundred yards from our parapets, installed their gun in an old trench, and telephoned back on prearranged signals for Very lights in various directions to illumine the landscape and invite inspection. “The whole scheme worked smoothly. In fact, it only wanted a few Germans to make it a complete success.” And the insult of the affair was that the enemy could be heard whistling and singing all night as they toiled at their own mysterious jobs. In the evening, just as the Battalion was being relieved by the Coldstream, a defensive mine, which was to have been exploded after the reliefs were comfortably settled in, had to go up an hour before, as the officer in charge, fearing that the Germans who were busy in the same field might break into his galleries at any moment, did not see fit to wait. The resulting German flutter just caught the end of the relief, and two platoons of No. 1 Company were soundly shelled as they went down the Rue du Bacquerot to Rugby Road. However, no one was hurt. The men of the 2nd Battalion were as unmoved by mines as were their comrades in the 1st. They resented the fatigue caused by extra precautions against them, but the possibilities of being hoisted sky-high at any moment did not shake the Celtic imagination.