you and you have great difficulty in getting
him out. Where we were later the line consisted of a series of small
redoubts or forts connected up with a parapet or curtain. The redoubts
were closed at the back and in them were built the dugouts in which
the defenders sleep. The redoubts were very strongly held, and if the
Germans got over the single parapets they could be driven back with
fire from the redoubts and supporting fire trenches.

For some time we had been waiting patiently for the big advance which
had been promised as soon as the ground got hard enough for troops to
manoeuvre over the fields. In the fall and winter in Flanders the
brown clay of the field is so sticky and soft that troops cannot
manoeuvre except on the roads. That is why in former wars in the low
countries the troops went into trenches during the winter. The
weather had been warm and sunny for some days and the creeks, which
they designate there with the euphonious titles of rivers, had fallen
a foot or two. There was still plenty of water in the country for the
Flemings are great lovers of water. Drains are not used there to carry
off water at all. They are used to contain water. Every farm has a
series of big ditches, three to six feet wide and about five feet
deep, running across it. The water is drained off the land with tile
into these ditches, but on the other hand these ditches provide with
the aforesaid tile a form of sub-irrigation inasmuch as the water in
the dry season flows back into the sub-soil through these same tile.
The ditches play a big part in the economy of the farms. The farmyard
buildings are built close alongside the paved roads. The roads are
paved with stone blocks about 8"x16". The Flemish farmer does his road
work once in a hundred years when he turns these blocks over and gives
them a fresh surface. A gateway, generally arched, leads into a square
around which the farm buildings stand. Next the road will be the
dwelling houses all under one roof two storeys high. One part,--the
master's,--will have its parlor and parlor bedroom. Then there will be
a kitchen, then other rooms for the help, then a dairy. On the other
side of the square the pigs and horses have quarters. Opposite on the
right from the gate there will be cow stables, then the back of the
square will be the barn. The roofs are all connected up. Around the
inside of the court yard next the buildings will run a brick sidewalk
about six feet wide, and th