ncluding the officer
dressed in bandages all over. He was such a nice boy. When he was put
into clean pyjamas, and had a clean hanky with eau-de-Cologne, he said,
"By Jove, it's worth getting hit for this, after the smells of dead
horses, dead men, and dead everything." He said no one could get into
Messines, where there is only one house left standing, because of the
unburied dead lying about. He couldn't move his arms, but he loved being
fed with pigs of tangerine orange, and, like so many, he was chiefly
concerned with "giving so much trouble." He looked awfully ill, but
seldom stopped smiling. Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.

_Later. On way to Havre._--These are all bound for home and have been
in hospital some time. They are clean, shaved, clothed, fed, and
convalescent. Most of the lying-downs are recovering from severe wounds
of weeks back. It is quite new even to see them at that stage, instead
of the condition we usually get them in. Some are the same ones we
brought down from Bethune three weeks ago.

One man was in a dug-out going about twenty feet back from the trench,
with sixteen others, taking cover from our howitzers and also from the
enemy's. The cultivated ground is so soft with the wet that it easily
gives, and the bursting of one of our shells close by drove the roof in
and buried these seventeen--four were killed and eleven injured by it,
but only two were got out alive, and they were abandoned as dead.
However, a rescue party of six faced the enemy shells above ground and
tried to get them out. In doing this two were killed and two wounded.
The other two went on with it. My man and another man were pinned down
by beams--the other had his face clear, but mine hadn't, though he could
hear the picks above him. He gave up all hopes of getting out, but the
other man when rescued said he thought this one was still alive, and
then got him out unconscious. When he came to he was in hospital in a
chapel, and it took him a long time to realise he was alive. "They
generally take you into chapel before they bury you," he said, "but I
told 'em they done it the wrong way round with me. That was the worst
mess ever I got into in this War," he finished up.

_Wednesday, January 20th, Sotteville._--The others have all been out,
but I've been a bit lazy and stayed in, washed my hair and mended my
clothes. This place is looking awfully pretty to-day, because all the
fields are flooded between us and the long li