wrapped myself up in my blankets,
boots, mud, lice and all. I hadn't been asleep long before the Huns
started "hating" the chateau. They have put over twenty-five large calibre
shells into my place, the grounds and the house. They are still at it.
Every time a shell bursts it makes a hole big enough to bury five horses,
and it shakes the foundations all round. The shells are bigger than usual.
The smoke and earth are blown up fifty or sixty feet in the air. The
effect is a moral disruption. _Why can't they keep that cotton out of
Germany?_

I have divided my section up into two teams, one in the cellars and one in
the gun-pits. I relieve them every twenty-four hours, and I practically
have to be in both places at once, but I have got a telephone in between
the two places. I have it by my bed so that I can constantly know how
things are going. However, the wire is cut two or three times a day by
bullets and shell splinters, my linesman has a constant job.

Fired all night; came back at six o'clock this morning, very tired. Had a
telegram from the general to fire two thousand rounds in twenty-four
hours; this is quite hard work. Actually we could fire the lot in five
minutes, but it would attract too much attention. The enemy use whole
batteries of artillery to blot out machine guns which attract attention,
so we have to fire single shots.

We have for neighbors four dead cows and an unexploded six-inch shell,
liable to go off any time, all in a radius of one hundred yards. We have
smashed holes through five walls so that we can go through the ruins
unobserved. In one place we pass over a dead cow, and in another we wade
through several tons of rotten potatoes, and I believe we have a corpse
handy; and part of our trench goes through another heap of rotten mangles.
I'm an authority on smells. I can almost tell the nationality of a corpse
now by the smell. It will soon be necessary to wear our smoke-helmets to
go into the emplacement. I don't think that I have told you that I cross
the Yser canal about six times a day. I'd been up a week before I knew
what it was. Now it only has a few feet of water in it, the rest being
held in the German locks. The part I cross over is full of bulrushes, and
is the home of moor-hens, water rats, mosquitoes and frogs.

On one side of the canal is a bank which is in great demand by the machine
gunners, who are able to get a certain amount of height and observation of
their fire. The ge