king improvements to our trenches led to
endless work with sandbags, planks, dug-outs, etc. My particular job was
mostly improving machine-gun positions, or selecting new sites and
carrying out removals,

"BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER.
MACHINE GUNS REMOVED AT SHORTEST NOTICE.
ATTACKS QUOTED FOR."

And so the long dark dreary nights went on. The men garrisoning the
little cracked-up village lived mostly in cellars. Often on my rounds,
during a rainy, windy, mournful night, I would look into a cellar and
see a congested mass of men playing cards by the light of a candle stuck
on a tin lid. A favourite form of illumination I came across was a lamp
made out of an empty tobacco tin, rifle oil for the illuminant, and a
bit of a shirt for a wick!

People who read all these yarns of mine, and who have known the war in
later days, will say, "Ah, how very different it was then to now." In my
last experiences in the war I have watched the enormous changes creeping
in. They began about July, 1915. My experiences since that date were
very interesting; but I found that much of the romance had left the
trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so
delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and
ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly needs--a touch
of romance.

Way back there, in about January, 1915, our soldiers had a perfectly
unique test of human endurance against appalling climatic conditions.
They lived in a vast bog, without being able to utilize modern
contrivances for making the tight against adverse conditions anything
like an equal contest. And yet I wouldn't have missed that time for
anything, and I'm sure they wouldn't either.

Those who have not actually had to experience it, or have not had the
opportunity to see what our men "stuck out" in those days, will never
fully grasp the reality.

One night a company commander came to me in the village and told me he
had got a bit of trench under his control which was altogether
impossible to hold, and he wanted me to come along with him to look at
it, and see if I could do anything in the way of holding the position by
machine guns. His idea was that possibly a gun might be fixed in such a
place behind so as to cover the frontage occupied by this trench. I came
along with him to have a look and see what could be done. He and I went
up the rain-soaked village street and out on to the field beyond. It was
as da