Several days ago the adjutant of the Tenth Battalion Sherwood Foresters came to me with this message which was sent through our lines:—

Arrest Officer Royal Engineers with orderly. Former, six feet, black moustache, web equipment, revolver. Latter, short, carries rifle, canvas bandolier. Please warn transports and all concerned.

The real spies, who did a great deal of damage, were finally rounded up and shot in a listening post trying to regain their own lines.

We are all used to dead bodies or pieces of men, so much so that we are not troubled by the sight of them. There was a right hand sticking out of the trench in the position of a man trying to shake hands with you, and as the men filed out they would often grip it and say, “So long, old top, we'll be back again soon.” One man had the misfortune to be buried in such a way that the bald part of the head showed. It had been there a long time and was sun-dried. Tommy used him to strike his matches on. A corpse in a trench is quite a feature, and is looked for when the men come back again to the same trench.

However, the Boche likes our beef. He prefers the brand canned in Chicago to his own, and will almost sit up and beg if we throw some over to him. The method is as follows: Throw one over ... sounds of shuffling and getting out of the way are heard in the enemy trench. Fritz thinks it's going to go off. Pause, and throw another. Fritz not so suspicious this time. Keep on throwing until happy voices from enemy trenches shout, “More! Give us more!” Then lob over as many hand grenades as you can pile into that part of the trench and tell them to share those too.

Dugouts are often made very comfortable with windows, tiled floors and furniture taken from neighboring shattered chateaux. I have even seen them with flowers growing in window-boxes over the entrance. They all have names. Some I saw yesterday were called “Anti-Krupp Cottage,” “Pleasant View,” and “Little Grey Home in the West.” There was one very homey site, well equipped and fitted, which had been dubbed the “Nut,”—the colonel lived there.

My old corps brought an aeroplane down with a machine gun last night. They were in a shell hole between the main and support trenches.

For the last few days I have been “up” looking for gun positions.

The lice are getting to be a torment. You have no idea how bad they are. Everybody up here is infested with them. I have tried smearing myself with kerosene, but that does not seem to trouble them at all. Silk underwear is supposed to keep them down. I suppose their feet slip on the shiny surface.

The food lately has taken on a wonderful flavor and I now know how dissolved German tastes. The cook, instead of sending back two miles for water to cook with, has been using water from the moat in which a Boche had been slowly disintegrating.

I have been given a special job by the general to enfilade a wood over the Mound. I have my section now in the second-line trenches waiting till it is dark before making a move. We have to make a machine-gun emplacement in a piece of ground which is decidedly unhealthy to visit during daylight. I have been there in daylight, but I had to creep out of it. On the map it is called a farm, but the highest wall is only three feet six inches high.

We came home very tired. We are attacking Hooge, a counter-attack, to take back trenches lost in the liquid fire attack—you will hear what we did from the papers, probably in three months' time.

I'm writing this in a new home, this time a splinter-proof dugout. The Huns are again strafing us—last shell burst fifty yards away a few minutes ago. Several times since I started writing I have had to shake off the dust and debris thrown by shell bursts on to these pages. I was again sniped at with shrapnel this morning on my machine while reconnoitering the roads—they all missed, but they're not nice. I'm filthy, alive, and covered with huge mosquito bites; you get sort of used to the incessant din in time. Even the forty-two centimeter shells, which make a row like freight trains with loose couplings going through the air, are not so terrible now.

Through a hole in my dugout I can see the Huns' shells Kulturing a chateau. It was once a very beautiful place with a moat, bridges, and splendid gardens. Now it's useless except that the timber and the furniture come in useful for our dugouts and the making of “duck walks,” the grated walks which line the bottom of the trenches.

Last night I was sitting in the Medical Officer's dugout when a man I knew came in. He was an officer in the Second Gordons. “I feel pretty bad, doc.” He explained his symptoms. “Trench fever; you go down the line.” “No, fix me up for tonight and maybe I won't need anything else.” He didn't! All that is left of him is being buried now, less than a hundred yards from where I write this.

In one place they had stuck up a board with “Warsaw Captured” on it.

My section worked until two o'clock and then the sandbags gave out, so we had to come home. This was a disappointment to me. I wanted to get the job finished. My men went on filling sandbags from the same place last night and discovered the remains of the late owner of the sword bayonet. He has now been decently buried, with a little wooden cross marked—

It is very strange the lightness with which serious things are taken by men here, and it took me some time to understand it. I met a young captain of the Royal Marine Artillery who was in charge of a battery of trench mortars. He was telling me of how one of his mortars and the crew were wiped out by a direct hit. He referred to it as though he had just missed his train.

I remembered this and I found that the nonchalant and care-free attitude of the average British officer was really a mask and simulated to keep his mind off the whole beastly business: this great big dirty job which white people must do.

I was sitting one afternoon by the side of the canal bank about two hundred yards in front of my chateau having tea with the officers of the East Yorks when suddenly the chateau-smashing started again. To go back was dangerous and useless. My men were under cover, resting, so that they would be ready for the night work. The shelling was intermittent. One shell went over and presently I heard crack,—crack,—boom, crack, crack,—crack; my heart was in my boots and I was unable to move.

We started to run. On the way up I looked into the cellars to see the men whom I, the minute previously, had mourned for, and found two asleep, three hunting through their shirts, and the rest breaking the army orders by “shooting craps.” From Bedford House a long trail of smoke was rising and the explosions became louder. We suddenly discovered the “Archie” in flames. It was in the courtyard and for camouflage had been covered with branches. It was mounted on an armored Pierce-Arrow truck. The “crump” had hit it, and gasoline, paint, branches, and hubs were supplying the fuel which was cooking out the ammunition, the crack, crack, being the report of single shells, whereas one loud boom signified the explosion of an entire box. These shells were going off in all directions and it became dangerous to stay too near.

One of the battalions has a fine victrola in the officers' mess dugout with a good selection of records. I have heard Caruso accompanied on the outside by an orchestra of guns. It was a wonderful mixture. Speaking of canned music reminds me we have a small portable trench machine, which closes up like a valise, easily handled and carried about. One man near had a box full of needles distributed in his back by a bomb; he considers himself disgraced; he says it will be kind of foolish in years to come to show his grandchildren twenty-five or thirty needles and tell them that they were the cause of his wounds.

sounds well with the addition of a little music.

Anything is used for trench work; often if we waited for the proper materials we should be uncomfortable, so it is one of the qualifications of a good soldier to find things. Sometimes we steal material belonging to other units, then stick around until the owners come back and help them look for them; however, it is always advisable to steal materials from juniors in rank; if they find it out, and are senior, then you are in for a one-sided strafe.

Sometimes names of shells go through several changes. For example, high explosives in the early part of the war were called “black Marias,” that being the slang name for the English police patrol wagon. Then they were called “Jack Johnsons,” then “coal boxes,” and finally they were christened “crumps” on account of the sound they make, a sort of cru-ump! noise as they explode. “Rum jar” is the trench mortar. “Sausage” is the slow-going aerial torpedo, a beastly thing about six feet long with fins like a torpedo. It has two hundred and ten pounds of high explosive and makes a terrible hole. “Whiz bang” is shrapnel.

This morning I experienced a wonderful surprise. I had gone up to one of the North Stafford Batteries to borrow a clinometer. The major, while he was getting the instrument for me, casually remarked: “There's yesterday's ‘Times’ on the bench if you care to look at it.” I turned first to the casualty list and later to the “London Gazette” for the promotions, and wholly by accident perused carefully the Motor Machine Gun Service list and there noted the announcement, “Keene, Louis, 2d Lieut., to be 1st Lieut.,” and for a fact this was the “official” intimation that I had been promoted. I had a couple of spare “pips”, rank stars, in my pocket-book, so I got my corporal to sew them on right away.

Intimacy between generals and lieutenants is unusual, but it looks as if mine had taken an interest in me, because when he noticed my insect-bitten face, he sent me down some dope he had used with good effect in India. I expect the mosquitoes in India were the ordinary kind, but, believe me, trench “skeeters” are constructed differently and are proof against the general's pet concoction.

I have several miners in my section who take a personal pride in the digging and shoring up of dugouts. So far the other two sections of the Battery are always behind in this work but they may look better on parade.

A Belgian battery commander has just wakened up and his shells are rattling overhead. From the fire trenches an incessant rattle of rifles is heard; all the bullets seem to come over here; constantly the whine of a musical ricochet bullet is heard. Otherwise things are dead quiet. It's getting on for three, so I'm going to bed in my blankets on one of the late chateau owner's splendid spring mattresses and carved oak bedstead. Oh! how nice it would be to sleep without lice. From an adjoining cellar my section are snoring, and I'm going to add to the chorus. Good-night, everybody.

This place isn't somewhere in France, it's somewhere in Hell! It has been the scene of a great many encounters; decayed French uniforms, old rifles, ammunition and leather equipment and bundles of mildewed tobacco leaves are strewn all over the place. I found the chin-strap of a German “Pickelhaube” in the grounds, the helmet of a French cuirassier, and the red pants of a Zouave, close together. When digging in the trenches or anywhere near the firing line you have to be careful: corpses, dead horses, and cattle are buried everywhere. I'm building a trench to my emplacement and we have a stinking cow in the direct line; this will have to be buried before we can cut through.

It's hot and sticky, and when you have to wear thick clothes and equipment it makes you very uncomfortable, but it's all in the game.

All through the night we fired single shots from a machine gun; my orders were to fire between half-past eight at night and four o'clock in the morning. We have a number of guns doing this. It harasses the enemy and keeps them from sleeping; anything that will wear a man down is practiced here.

I have divided my section up into two teams, one in the cellars and one in the gun-pits. I relieve them every twenty-four hours, and I practically have to be in both places at once, but I have got a telephone in between the two places. I have it by my bed so that I can constantly know how things are going. However, the wire is cut two or three times a day by bullets and shell splinters, my linesman has a constant job.

Fired all night; came back at six o'clock this morning, very tired. Had a telegram from the general to fire two thousand rounds in twenty-four hours; this is quite hard work. Actually we could fire the lot in five minutes, but it would attract too much attention. The enemy use whole batteries of artillery to blot out machine guns which attract attention, so we have to fire single shots.

We have for neighbors four dead cows and an unexploded six-inch shell, liable to go off any time, all in a radius of one hundred yards. We have smashed holes through five walls so that we can go through the ruins unobserved. In one place we pass over a dead cow, and in another we wade through several tons of rotten potatoes, and I believe we have a corpse handy; and part of our trench goes through another heap of rotten mangles. I'm an authority on smells. I can almost tell the nationality of a corpse now by the smell. It will soon be necessary to wear our smoke-helmets to go into the emplacement. I don't think that I have told you that I cross the Yser canal about six times a day. I'd been up a week before I knew what it was. Now it only has a few feet of water in it, the rest being held in the German locks. The part I cross over is full of bulrushes, and is the home of moor-hens, water rats, mosquitoes and frogs.

All sentries here are doubled; one thing it's safer, and another it's company; even when things are quiet, rats and mice scamper about and it sets your nerves on end. Things which are inanimate during the day become alive at night. Trees seem to walk about. I wonder what it tastes like to have a real meal in which tinned food does not figure; fancy a tablecloth; my tablecloth is a double sheet of newspaper, and even then I can't have a new one every day.