I had a fairly decent trench there, as I always had everywhere, knowing that the harder I worked on my trench the more chance I had of safety. I here lost a decent chum, killed on that day, the fourth of November, by a bullet through his brain, whilst he was spreading jam on a biscuit. When it became dark two of my comrades came into my decent trench, and there we soon dropped off to sleep, all three of us, the Germans shelling us all the time. When we awoke, it was nearly nine o'clock; we were roused from our sleep by some one throwing, or rather showering, earth in upon us. Up I jumped and inquired _sotto voce_: "Who are you?" Back came the reply: "Who are you?" On telling him, he replied that he was a Royal Engineer digging a communication trench; we were not sorry to hear that he was not one of the enemy. He then inquired what we were doing there, remarking that the Lancashires had been relieved and gone back some time ago. After wandering about for an hour, we found the Regiment in the reserve trenches in the wood. Every one had settled down for the night, rations and rum had been issued, and we had perforce to make the best of it. I did not sleep so well as usual, feeling the loss of my pal. However, next morning, November the fifth, we were told that, as we had had such a hard time of it of late, we were to be put into reserve on some fairly easy trenches on the left of the road and just in front of the wood we occupied on our first coming up. All we had to contend with was cross-fire from the enemy's guns. It does not sound very dreadful, nor to us men did it sound hard; most of us thought that we were going to have a fairly easy time of it; so into the trenches we went quite happily. But the shell-fire there was terrible, and the way the shrapnel whistled through those trees, to say nothing of the high explosives, fairly made one's hair stand on end.