orrow night
when we arrive in billets. I am afraid that it is rather short, but
one has very little time on one's hands in the trenches, I find.

Yesterday we came out of the trenches. In the morning I got up early
and was cleaned for the fray at 10-0 o'clock when with his and I with
my guns we played havoc for an hour or so. The men were very pleased
when I removed what they declared to be a cookhouse. This war becomes
quite incomprehensible to you once you have seen the real thing; no
tactics, no strategy, just men turned moles. I believe in time we
should become sort of Cave-men; our eyes would have developed into
sorts of periscopes, our feet would have become web-footed to help us
to stand up on wet duck boards; there would be a new type of man. As
it is, it is quite haphazard and pointless. Just somebody makes
himself disagreeable when he has nothing better to do. It is so
difficult to hurt anyone actually in trenches; I think a mortar is the
only thing that can do so. With dozens of shells sent over in the last
ten days or so (40 yesterday morning) there has not been a single man
in the brigade wounded by shell fire, and rifles and machine guns are
the same. The casualties occur only in a push when one goes over the
parapet, and that is not war, only a big field day. I was talking to a
sergeant-major who had been through Neuve Chapelle, and said that it
was just like a field day in Salisbury Plain, men marching in fours in
all sorts of formations. His battalion halted after a little, ate its
lunch, and then went on, got a bit too far forward, returned and dug
themselves in, and trenches again. It is a hole and corner affair. We
were all very cheered yesterday morning by the official news of the
French successes at Verdun, and we all got obstreperous and terrorised
poor Fritz. The men say they infinitely prefer the front line trenches
to training at home. They have more comfortable sleeping
accommodation, better food and less work. I like it better myself.
Then what seems funny is to come out of the trenches and to be in
perfect safety two and three miles back. I went on a course to-day;
demonstration in mortars.

We are billeted in a topping farm, and I have a huge great room with a
big bed and a fire. They are nice clean people in the farm. The men
have a loft, and use of kitchen for sitting in. We are within
shelling distance, but the people in the farm have been living in the
farm, carrying-on their ordinary