ave a large-sized cake
now and then?

The war isn't over yet, I fear. We live in the usual touch-and-go
condition.

_September 8._

Things hum. Troops like ants all over the ground. In tents, in bivvies,
in the open, everywhere. And the eternal chain of motor lorries bringing
up ammunition and supplies. These one sees all over France. But here
they block half the roads. Well, yesterday morning I rode out alone with
the Colonel and two orderlies. We went to some high ground from which
you can see it all, dismounted, and sent the horses back. In front of
us, in the valley, a wrecked town with the strangest thing on the
still-standing tower. I hope to make a picture of it if ever I can get
any time again.

Later in the day from one of our O.P.'s I began a sketch of the whole
panorama of the battle. Desolate ragged country, torn with shell wounds;
the poor scarecrow trees like arms stretched up to heaven for help.
Fields that once were golden with corn now grey and scarred with white
trenches that look like a network of pale worms lying where they died.

Now, from another O.P. I'm looking at the arid chaos below. Arid and
lonely-looking, but not silent. A strafe is on. Seems to be getting
louder and more continuous. We passed on our way here a great naval gun
crashing out death to the burrowing Huns. Swallow doesn't like naval
guns.

From flimsy net shelters flash the expensive guns, and the bombardment
gathers strength, gathers volume, until you'd think something must
burst--the world or the universe: either might split from end to end.
The dust and smoke are gradually making everything invisible. Crumps
come whistling and heaving up great clouds of heavy blackness. We look
at our watches. Zero hour in five minutes. The aeroplanes buzzing aloft,
and the sausages sitting among the low clouds, inert and so
vulnerable-looking. Can there be anything left? Can a single soul live?

[Illustration: TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE
They don't look much like trenches, because they were battered to
pieces. A 'dump' on the near horizon was hit by a Boche shell. It blazed
and crackled and smouldered all night, a drifting column of dull pink
smoke.]

_September 9._

Surely we shall get through. Even in spite of the rain. The rain has
made the country into a quagmire.

Reconnoitred the front trenches to-day with the Colonel, in a particular
part where everything is at sixes and sevens, and no one quite
knows