This organization constituted the first lines in the spring of 1915, when we hoped for an early victory. So temporary did the work appear to be, we spent no more time and effort on our trench systems than seemed necessary for immediate purposes. The dugouts were of the most limited dimensions, really kennels, large enough for two men to sleep fairly comfortably, but which usually housed six, no one knows how. One came there overcome by sleep. One threw himself on the ground without removing his accoutrement, and was asleep almost before touching the earth. To afford some protection against the bitter wind, a cloth was stretched in front of the opening. While this shut out the unwelcome breezes, it also shut in a concentrated, hot and malodorous steam, composed of the mouldy moisture from the earth itself, of human perspiration and panting exhalations, of wet leather and clothing. However, one breathed somehow. When the time was up, and one went out to resume work or watching, the icy air enveloped one like a sepuchral winding-sheet, and the night blinded one’s eyes. One followed the communication-trench, took up gun or shovel, as the order might happen to be, and became either soldier or laborer; or, more often, both at once. Everything was done at night. Everything was dismal, dangerous, frightful. There was no real repose, no relaxation. The incessant shell-fire added its horror to our other discomforts and dangers. The shell! that insensate creature of chance, which bursts over the innocent, scatters its fragments over the plain, and in stupid indifference crushes a clod of earth or snuffs out the lives of a hundred human beings. The shell! that monster which comes with a moaning wail, invisible as a beast of darkness, and dies in a shower of fire. One easily becomes familiar with its sound. At first, every shot was terrifying. Then we learned to know approximately what course a shell would follow, at what point it would fall. Then we ceased to listen to or fear any but those coming our way. No others counted. They were non-existent. Before we reached this point of familiarity, the salvos of that plaything, the seventy-five, made us shudder. They came so fast that we scarcely had time to distinguish the individual shots. Immediately the deadly whistling object skimmed the ground, and the explosion resounded. Some men turned pale, others paid little attention.