g in a loft of a deserted brewery. I am now complete with rifle,
bayonet, and scabbard.

[Illustration]

"Wipers"

Sometimes you see a man smashed about in a terrible way, such a mess that
you think he is a goner; he may recover. Another man may have just a small
wound and will die. A bullet hitting a man in the head will smash it as
effectually as a sledge-hammer. Once a man leaves your unit, wounded, you
don't see him again. You get a fresh draft.

No one thinks of peace here. Germany must be put in a similar state to
Belgium first.

We never travel anywhere without our smoke helmets; they come right over
our heads and are tucked into our shirts; they have two glass eye-pieces.
When we have them on we look like the old Spanish gentleman who ran the
"Star Chamber." Helmets must always be ready to put on instantly. Gas is a
matter of seconds in coming over. The helmets are better than respirators,
but have to be constantly inspected. A small hole, or if one is allowed to
dry, means a casualty.

Storm brewing. Flies bad, driven in by the wind. Nature goes on just the
same. I suppose that this farm would be just as fly-ridden in an ordinary
summer. During the bombarding yesterday I noticed swallows flying about
quite unconcerned. Corn, mostly self-planted, grows right up to the
trenches. Cabbages grow wild. Communicating trenches run right through
fields of crops; flowers grow in profusion between the lines, big red
poppies and field daisies, and there are often hundreds of little frogs in
the bottom of the trenches.

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A trip to No Man's Land is an excursion which you never forget. It varies
in width and horrors. My impression was similar to what I should feel
being on Broadway without any clothes--a naked feeling. Forty-seven and one
half inches of earth are necessary to stop a bullet, and it's nice to have
that amount of dirt between you and the enemy's bullets. The dead lie out
in between the lines or hang up on the wire; they don't look pretty after
they have been out some time. It's a pleasant job to have to get their
identification disks, and we have to search the bodies of the enemy dead
for papers and even buttons so that we can know what unit is in front of
us. Flowers grow in between, butterflies play together, and birds nest in
the wire. When the grass becomes too high it has to be cu