We passed the day very happily sitting about and sleeping in the sun. At dusk we got orders to move and go and improve some entrenchments. * * * * * As soon as it was dark the regiment paraded and moved off, with orders to dig till midnight and then rest and cross the Aisne an hour before dawn. The place assigned to my company for digging was a ditch running along a fence facing the hills on the enemy's side of the river. The enemy had their trenches on the slopes of these hills, and it seemed funny to be digging under their noses, as it were, under cover of darkness. Evidently the night was good enough cover, for not a shot was fired to disturb us at our work. I noticed, however, that Goyle ran no risks, but made each man lay his equipment and rifle exactly in front of him so that the different working parties could be transformed into a firing-line at an instant's notice. The men worked away with a will as unconcerned as if they were digging a potato patch. The only thing which worried them a little was a searchlight which the enemy continually flashed across the front of their lines. At first the men could not get used to this light, but threw themselves flat on the ground whenever it appeared in their direction, but as the enemy never fired, apparently the searchlight revealed nothing to them. Evans and I studied this light for a little while and then discovered that a knoll lay between it and us, and hid us from its direct rays so that we were all perfectly safe. As a matter of fact Goyle explained that if a man did come into the direct ray of a searchlight, he would only look like the stump of a tree or a shrub to the observer if he stood still. It was by movement alone that he betrayed himself. However, it requires a certain amount of confidence to stand quite still when caught by a searchlight and not try to move away or hide behind a tree. This confidence the men who were not hidden by the knoll lacked at first; in fact, they had a great dislike for the searchlight and were inclined to be reproachful because we had no searchlights ourselves. Thomas Atkins is a keen critic of the art of war, and such things as well-placed searchlights and the superior number of the enemy's machine-guns do not escape his notice. He likes to feel that he has been given as good a start as the man he is fighting against, and it would have been interesting to have heard the comments of our men in the trenches when the Germans first started to employ gas. At midnight we knocked off digging and retired to a field to sleep. It is extremely cold in the Aisne valley on autumn nights, and the dew-drenched ground did not look inviting. The men were told to lie down where they were, and as it began to dawn on them that no further arrangements were to be made for their comfort, they grinned rather expressively in a way they have when they wish to be quite pleasant but at the same time feel they have a lot to put up with.