tique Spanish galleons upside down.
On past these farms the road was suddenly cut across by a deep and ugly
gash: a reserve trench. So now we were getting nearer to our
destination. A particularly large and evil-smelling farm stood on the
right. The reserve trench ran into its back yard, and disappeared
amongst the ruins. From the observations I had made, when inspecting
these trenches, I knew that the extreme right of our position was a bit
to the right of this farm, so I and my performing troupe decided to go
through the farmyard and out diagonally across the field in front. We
did this, and at last could dimly discern the line of the trenches in
front. We were now on the extreme right of the section we had to
control, close to the River Douve, and away to the left ran the whole
line of our trenches. Along the whole length of this line the business
of taking over from the old battalion was being enacted. That old
battalion made a good bargain when they handed over that lot of slots to
us. The trenches lay in a sort of echelon formation, the one on the
extreme right being the most advanced. This one we made for, and as we
squelched across the mud to it a couple of German star shells fizzed up
into the air and illuminated the whole scene. By their light I could see
the whole position, but could only form an approximate idea of how our
lines ran, as our parapets and trenches merged into the mud so
effectively as to look like a vast, tangled, disorderly mass of
sandbags, slime and shell holes. We reached the right-hand trench. It
was a curious sort of a trench too, quite a different pattern to those
we had occupied at St. Yvon, The first thing that struck me about all
these trenches was the quantity of sandbags there were, and the
geometrical exactness of the attempts at traverses, fire steps, bays,
etc. Altogether, theoretically, much superior trenches, although very
cramped and narrow. I waited for another star shell in order to see the
view out in front. One hadn't long to wait around there for star shells.
One very soon sailed up, nice and white, into the inky sky, and I saw
how we were placed with regard to the Germans, the hill and Messines. We
were quite near a little stream, a tributary of the Douve, in fact it
ran along the front of our trenches. Immediately on the other side the
ground rose in a gradual slope up the Messines hill, and about
three-quarters way up this slope were the German trenches.

When I had s