I forgot to tell you that our quarters are the most comfortable we have had. We are in a hut which is built like a tunnel. The outside is made of corrugated iron, but the inside is lined with wood. There are fourteen of us in my hut, but there is plenty of room. We sleep on cots for the first time since we left Fort Totten. IV--STORY OF AN AMERICAN WITH A SIEGE BATTERY (Told by Wallace Gibbs) _Our guide in this trench is with a British siege gun battery shelling and being shelled by the Germans on the Flanders front. He tells of a stormy night under shell fire._ Aug. 13, 1917. Your letter followed me all around Blighty and over half of France. And yet it got me. Got me in the middle of a tree-shattered, shell-pocked country field, in a wee hole in the ground. That's some postal service for you! Guns are going merrily to-night. Fritz was putting up S. O. S. signals a bit ago. He dropped one on our cook house about a quarter of an hour ago. Poor "Ginger," our cook, got it badly. Head, back and leg. You can't dodge 'em here; there's too much row. Besides, one don't hear the shell that's going to get one. Don't know whether that's a blessing or not. A vivid imagination is no good to any one out here. Some fellows are jumpy with expectation; others are always smelling gas, and so on. Saw a boche plane brought down yesterday. He made a terrific attempt to get right, almost succeeded, then nose dived plumb! Can you picture me in a little narrow, gravelike hole, writing this--and guns firing behind me and Hun shrapnel whining and bursting with a ping just outside? That's the doings just now. Fritz is being real nasty. You just live on chance at this game. One gets callous--only thoughts of home annoy a bit. One fellow got killed early this morning. It was hard lines. Fritz was pushing the shell over; it was black and wet, only gun flashes giving light now and again, leaving it blacker than before. (Things are rotten in the night!) One came very near to where they were unloading shell. He made a dive for an old trench: just then another burst. He copped it when he had only a yard to go. Another second would have done it. It's all luck. I was at the cook house to-night; I left just a bit before. I said to a fellow, "Are you going up to the guns?" He said, "No." So I pushed off on my own. Still that's only stray shooting, nothing to what we give Fritz. He must have hell in his lines. He's getting what the British once got, only more so. He didn't have to fight then, he merely walked over. Now he gets as good as he gives, and he don't like it. You never saw such a weary, scared-looking crowd in your natural as the mob that came in from the latest push. I was sorry for the boys--some looked only 15 years old. They were mixed with big, sour, dour, square-head swine. We are looking forward to giving them another dig soon.