Needless to say, we are burning to play with all these new toys simultaneously, like a small boy on Christmas morning. But we have had little opportunity so far. To vary the metaphor, we must eat up our bread and butter before we are allowed cake. We are busy at present learning trench routine. Taking over trenches from another unit, for instance. This is a complicated and exasperating pastime. It usually has to be performed in the dark; otherwise enemy aeroplanes might observe unusual activity behind our line, and advise their artillery to that effect. This involves much night-marching along roads pitted with shell-holes; and the trouble about a shell-hole three feet deep is that in wet weather it looks like a perfectly innocent puddle. Frequently, to avoid congested wheel traffic, we have to march across country in single file, under the leadership of a faltering guide. Not a light must be shown, not a word spoken. Each man, loaded with rifle, equipment, gas apparatus, and a few extra and unauthorized comforts, has to follow the ghostly form of the man immediately in front of him. It is discouraging work, for the simple reason that if you set one hundred men to march in single file in the dark, though the leader may be groping his way forward at the rate of one mile per hour, the last man in the _queue_ is always running, and _has_ to run if he is not to be left behind. No one knows why this should be so, but the uncanny fact remains. Once you have descended into the communication trenches it is less easy to lose yourself—unless the guide sets the example—but your progress becomes slower than ever. Possibly—probably—you meet a procession going in the opposite direction—a ration-party, maybe, or stretcher-bearers with their patient, cheery freight. The fact that they have no right to be there at all—practically all communication-trenches here are supposed to be one-way thoroughfares—makes matters no easier, though it affords relief in the form of argumentative profanity as you struggle together in the constricted fairway like stout matrons loaded with market-produce in a street-car. Arrived in the actual trenches, the congestion is even greater, for now there are just twice as many men in the trench as it was constructed to hold, and the outgoing party must never budge until the incoming party have arrived and “taken over.” Taking over is no mere formality either. Officers, machine-gunners, bombers, chemical experts, and other specialists must seek out their “opposite numbers” in the gross darkness and take receipt in due form of ammunition, observation-posts, gas-alarms, and situation reports, amid the crackling of rifle-fire and the sputtering of the illuminating flares.