n it! and tea.

_Thursday, April 15th._--This afternoon has been a day to remember.
We've had our journey up to the firing line, to a dressing station just
over half a mile from the first line of German trenches! It is between
the two villages of Givenchy and Cuinchy, this side of La Bassee. The
journey there was through the village I walked to with Marie Therese
(which has been shelled twice since we came), and along the long, wide,
straight road the British Army now knows so well--paved in the middle
and a straight line of poplars on each side. As far as you could see it
was covered with two streams of khaki, with an occasional string of
French cavalry--one stream going up to the trenches after their so many
days' "rest," and the other coming from the trenches to their "rest." We
soon got up to some old German trenches from which we drove them months
ago; they run parallel with the road. On the other side we saw one of
our own Field Batteries, hidden in the scrub of a hedge--not talking at
the moment. There were also some French batteries hidden behind an
embankment. "The German guns are trained always on this road," said our
A.S.C. driver cheerfully, "but they don't generally begin not till about
4 o'clock," so, as it was then 2.30, we weren't alarmed. They know it is
used for transport and troops and often send a few shells on to it. We
sat next him and he did showman. Before long we got into the area of
ruined houses--and they are a sight! They spell War, and War
only--nothing else (but perhaps an earthquake?) could make such awful
desolation; in a few of the smaller cottages with a roof on, the
families had gone back to live in a sort of patched-up squalor, but all
the bigger houses and parts of streets were mere jagged shells. The two
villages converge just where we turned a corner from the La Bassee road
into a lane on our left where the dressing station is. A little farther
on is "Windy Corner," which is "a very hot place." We had before this
passed some of our own reserve unoccupied trenches, some with sandbags
for parapets, but now we suddenly found ourselves with a funny barricade
of different coloured and shaped doors, taken from the ruined houses,
about 8 feet high on our right. This was to prevent the German snipers
from seeing our transport or M.A.'s pass down that lane to the
communication trench, which has its beginning at the ruined house which
is used by the F.A. as one of its advanced dressing stat