ot produce again (also a
fallacy, for I had some more excellent grapes there nearly a year
afterwards--September '15). I did not hear what compensation he got,
but he would have been lucky to get 20 francs.

I once went into a poorly furnished watchmaker's shop, but the lady
there could do nothing for my watch. She told me that, being an
optician in a small way as well, she had had a whole stock of
spectacles and glasses. When the Germans came through the town in
October, they demanded fieldglasses. The few ones she had they stole,
and then because she had no more they stole her watchmaker's tools,
and swept all the spectacles and glasses and watches on to the floor
and stamped them to powder.

There is really little more to relate about our time at Dranoutre and
neighbourhood. It was a time of a certain amount of nerve-strain, for
we all knew that our trenches were by no means perfect, and that if
the enemy did attack us we should have great difficulty in bringing up
reserves in time to beat them off; for we could not keep them under
cover within decent range--there were no billets or houses,--and if we
dug trenches for them they were not only exposed to the enemy's shell
fire but were certain to be half full of water in two days; whilst we
could not get anything like enough trench stores and timber, and what
we did get we had enormous difficulty in bringing up to the trenches.

During all this time the artillery helped us all they knew, and were
extremely well run, first by Ballard, then Saunders, and then Sandys,
as Brigade Commanders. But they were badly handicapped by want of
shells, especially howitzer high explosives, and we had to suffer a
great deal of shell fire without returning it.

We used to average about four casualties a day in each battalion, say
fifteen to twenty a day in the Brigade, which made a big hole in the
strengths. Officers were always getting killed--often, alas, their own
fault, through excess of zeal; and men used perpetually to lose their
lives through getting out of the trenches in order to stretch their
half-frozen limbs. Sickness was, strange to say, almost negligible.
There were far more cases of arthritis and other things due to cold
wet feet than anything else; and the men were extraordinarily healthy,
comparatively speaking, considering the desperately uncomfortable hard
life.

General Morland was, of course, commanding the Division during this
time, and used to come nearly ev