more lively. They had been heavily
shelled and there had been a German attack. And this time he was writing
to his father, and wrote more freely. He had scribbled in pencil.

"Things are much livelier here than they were. Our guns are getting to
work. They are firing in spells of an hour or so, three or four times a
day, and just when they seem to be leaving off they begin again. The
Germans suddenly got the range of our trenches the day before yesterday,
and begun to pound us with high explosive.... Well, it's trying. You
never seem quite to know when the next bang is coming, and that keeps
your nerves hung up; it seems to tighten your muscles and tire you.
We've done nothing but lie low all day, and I feel as weary as if I had
marched twenty miles. Then 'whop,' one's near you, and there is a flash
and everything flies. It's a mad sort of smash-about. One came much too
close to be pleasant; as near as the old oil jars are from the barn
court door. It bowled me clean over and sent a lot of gravel over me.
When I got up there was twenty yards of trench smashed into a mere hole,
and men lying about, and some of them groaning and one three-quarters
buried. We had to turn to and get them out as well as we could....

"I felt stunned and insensitive; it was well to have something to do....

"Our guns behind felt for the German guns. It was the damnest racket.
Like giant lunatics smashing about amidst colossal pots and pans. They
fired different sorts of shells; stink shells as well as Jack Johnsons,
and though we didn't get much of that at our corner there was a sting of
chlorine in the air all through the afternoon. Most of the stink shells
fell short. We hadn't masks, but we rigged up a sort of protection with
our handkerchiefs. And it didn't amount to very much. It was rather like
the chemistry room after Heinrich and the kids had been mixing things.
Most of the time I was busy helping with the men who had got hurt.
Suddenly there came a lull. Then some one said the Germans were coming,
and I had a glimpse of them.

"You don't look at anything steadily while the guns are going. When a
big gun goes off or a shell bursts anywhere near you, you seem neither
to see nor hear for a moment. You keep on being intermittently stunned.
One sees in a kind of flicker in between the impacts....

"Well, there they were. This time I saw them. They were coming out and
running a little way and dropping, and our shell was bursting among t