That village was one of the very worst I had come across--dead horses and dead men everywhere. It was full of caves, in which we were kept; but we stayed there only one day, during which an enemy aeroplane passed over, and on seeing us dropped a silver ball which slowly floated down to where we were, thereby giving the range to the German batteries. But they could not hurt us on account of the good cover afforded by the caves. It was the first silver ball we had seen, and at first we took it for a bomb. That night we returned to our old caves once more. I afterwards heard that the reason of our being called out was that the 21st Brigade, which had relieved us, had lost the trenches through a great enemy attack, but had regained them by nightfall. Whether that was the true reason or not I was never really able to learn, but, on going back to those trenches at the end of the week, which we did, we found a large grave, with a heading which read: "Thirty-seven Officers and Men of the Sherwood Foresters lie here." It was a Thursday night on which we went back to our old billets in the caves, and on the following Saturday we once more returned to our old positions, only a little further to the right, the 1st Brigade taking over those we had dug in the first place. There we spent another three weeks, two regiments taking the front line and two in trenches in support a little lower down the hill. First of all we worked this arrangement alternately four days in the front line and then four days in reserve, but this was soon altered to forty-eight hours. It was a fine sight when we were in the trenches in front to see the relieving battalions coming up to relieve us: there were no communication trenches then, and they had to advance in extended order--lines and lines of them; and when the enemy opened fire, as indeed they did occasionally, they all dropped down as one man. As soon as the firing ceased they were off again, and so on until they reached the trenches, when they would fall down just in rear, and on the word of an Officer we would get out and they would get in. We would retire in the same order as they advanced. There was plenty of work on the Aisne during those days, the men in the front line connecting each single trench up with another, so as to form one long continual line; also the making of bunny holes. During the day we had the usual order: one man in three on sentry, now commonly termed in the trenches "look-out"; and, at night, every other man--if a quiet night, one would be on sentry, one resting, and one taken for digging a communication trench, each man taking his turn an hour about. Those in the reserve lines would all turn out with picks and shovels the whole of the night, digging one main communication trench.