r it's done, the sooner you'll leave."

We know the pious claptrap. It is not recorded in the annals of the
regiment that a trenching fatigue-party ever once got away before the
moment when it became absolutely necessary to quit the neighborhood if
they were not to be seen, marked and destroyed along with the work of
their hands.

We murmur, "Yes, yes--all right; it's not worth saying. Go easy."

But everybody applies himself to the job courageously, except for some
invincible sleepers whose nap will involve them later in superhuman
efforts.

We attack the first layer of the new line--little mounds of earth,
stringy with grass. The ease and speed with which the work begins--like
all entrenching work in free soil--foster the illusion that it will
soon be finished, that we shall be able to sleep in the cavities we
have scooped: and thus a certain eagerness revives.

But whether by reason of the noise of the shovels, or because some men
are chatting almost aloud, in spite of reproofs, our activity wakes up
a rocket, whose flaming vertical line rattles suddenly on our right.

"Lie down!" Every man flattens himself, and the rocket balances and
parades its huge pallor over a sort of field of the dead.

As soon as it is out one hears the men, in places and then all along,
detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and resume
the task with more discretion.

Soon another star-shell tosses aloft its long golden stalk, and still
more brightly illuminates the flat and motionless line of trenchmakers.
Then another and another.

Bullets rend the air around us, and we hear a cry, "Some one wounded!"
He passes, supported by comrades. We can just see the group of men who
are going away, dragging one of their number.

The place becomes unwholesome. We stoop and crouch, and some are
scratching at the earth on their knees. Others are working full length;
they toil, and turn, and turn again, like men in nightmares. The earth,
whose first layer was light to lift, becomes muddy and sticky; it is
hard to handle, and clings to the tool like glue. After every shovelful
the blade must be scraped.

Already a thin heap of earth is winding along, and each man has the
idea of reinforcing the incipient breastwork with his pouch and his
rolled-up greatcoat, and he hoods himself behind the slender pile of
shadow when a volley comes--

While we work we sweat, and as soon as we stop working we are pierced
through by the cold.