ow.

[Illustration: GIRD TRENCH
Gird Trench was only won after repeated attacks. It was the main German
defence of GEUDECOURT. While this sketch was being made things
were comparatively quiet. And the innumerable people living underground
could get a little sleep.]

_September 15._

Zero hour has come and gone. The show is a peach. Fritz is scuttling
back with us on his tail. We are to creep up, and as soon as Fritz
is beyond his last line of trenches (which he jolly nearly is now) up
and through we hope to go.

_September 20._

[Sidenote: TOWARDS GEUDECOURT]

We are long past Fritz's first line; past his second line; at his third
line; and his fourth line he is wildly digging now--places for his
M.G.'s wire, etc. But he's very, very hard put to it. We have almost all
the high ground. Our guns are at it day and night. Trench warfare no
longer exists. A few hastily dug holes, a few short lines of trench,
mostly battered to pieces, and that's all. It's almost open fighting.
Even the infantry come up across the open. No communication trenches,
nothing of that sort. The crump holes are continuous. There's scarcely
an inch of ground that isn't a crump hole.

I was up in an interesting wood this morning with the Colonel. Now, this
will give you some idea of how dislocated and above-ground everything
is:

We wanted to go to a place the other side of the wood. When we reached
the middle of the wood, where a new O.P. of ours has been established,
Fritz put up a barrage on the edge of the wood. Very well, then. We just
waited at the O.P. till the barrage was over, and then calmly walked
out. The wood is only a few shattered stumps of trees, and the place
where undergrowth once was is one continuous sea of earth thrown about
in every conceivable shape, with dead Tommies and dead Fritzes lying
side by side. So the wood isn't much cover, you can imagine.

On the far side of the wood is beautiful rolling country, but not green.
It's all brown, just a mess of earth. It's pitted with holes just like
sand after a hailstorm. In the distance you can see real lovely trees,
but nothing grows where the strafing is. Overhead the martins flicker
and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal
noises crash and boom away merrily.

Ought I, perhaps, not to talk of these things? Does it worry you to
think of crumps bursting and so on? But, really, it seems quite ordinary
and in the day's work here. Men t