lf-past one. The trench is
finished. We must cover up all signs of it with branches, lest the wily
Taube should see, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

A quarter to two.

[Sidenote: A STRAFE]

Suddenly crash! bang! clash! boom! bang! We almost jump out of our
skins. Where the deuce were all those guns hidden? From all about us,
and far away behind and on either flank, our guns have begun strafing.
The most hideous and deafening din.

The ground seems to shake. Then an order comes that we are to clear out
at once. We do so. The Boches haven't answered yet, but they will. The
whole thing seems quite unreal. The men vastly entertained. I honestly
felt as if I were at some exciting melodrama. The least cessation of the
guns, and I found myself saying: "Don't stop! don't stop!" I shouted
into Corporal Nutley's car: "Can you hear what I'm saying?" and he
answered: "No, sir."

At last we got out into the little path, and had to double along through
the mud. Humphry was last man out, and he saw the one and only shell
the Boches sent over, exploding quite close to the aforementioned
dug-out.

Isn't it funny. The Boches don't apparently know of this dug-out, or of
the cable trenches, or they would, of course, smash it to pieces. And,
for some reason that I haven't yet grasped, they never reply to our guns
immediately. They wait for perhaps ten minutes, and _then_ they don't
always reply to the same spot we spoke from. As, for example, this wood.
Our guns were all in and round about the wood. The Boches apparently
strafed back at an unoffending village on the west side of the hill.

So, with our guns still behaving like things delirious, we eventually
reached the horses. Jezebel was quietly gorging herself with long
luscious grass beside the hedge. She told me she hadn't noticed anything
unusual. Poor Swallow was standing quite still, with his nostrils wide
open, breathing hard and trembling all over. A good many horses were
trembling, but the majority agreed with Jezebel: "It's only some silly
nonsense on the part of those Human Beings again. Don't listen."

Then we saddled up and rode back to a place well behind, where we could
exercise the beasties. They had been given no exercise for three days.
And so home again to this farm. The horses are all in a field surrounded
by trees, and couldn't be seen from above at all. I have seen lots
of other horse-lines of other units, though, much closer to the front
than this is--q