One morning, just about cockcrow, there was a fearful din outside our more or less private apartments in the trenches, where I had been snatching two winks after three days and nights’ hard. The Germans were on us, and two minutes after the alarm we were under fire. They had crept up very close under cover of darkness, and were in trenches not more than three hundred yards away. They must have driven out our chaps who were in them, and we got orders to retake the trenches. There was no fancy work about it. We were rushed forward in companies. One half of each company would rush forward for a few yards, about twenty, while the second half lay on the ground firing at the enemy. Then the first half would lie down and fire while the second took up the running. In that way we got to the trenches with very little loss, and commenced shifting them in the way our chaps always shift undesirables from any place we want. They were well entrenched, and it was like digging them out with the bayonets. We got them out in the end: _A Corporal of the Durham Light Infantry_. Bullets and “Footer” We are a light-hearted lot, and so are our officers. We dug out for them a kind of a subterranean mess-room, where they took their meals. One fellow decorated it with some cigarette cards and pictures he cut out of a French paper. The food they get is not exactly what would be supplied to them at the Hotel Cecil. A jollier and kinder lot you would not meet in a day’s march. One officer, who was well stocked with cigarettes, divided among his men, and we were able to repay him for his kindness by digging him out from his mess-room. A number of shells tore up the turf, and the roof and sides fell in like a castle built of cards, burying him and two others. They were in a nice pickle, but we got them out safe and sound. During the time we were in these trenches nearly 500 shells burst over and around us, but, as the protection was so good, not a single chap was killed, and less than a dozen were wounded. When we were able to get into the open air once more and stretch our legs, it was then we realized what we had been subjected to, for the ground was literally strewn with burst shells. If all goes well we are going to have a football match to-morrow, as I have selected a team from our lot to play the Borderers, who are always swanking what they can do: _Pte. Harris, West Kent Regiment_. Gallant Frenchmen