r walls, tiling or boarding their floorways,
timbering the dugouts, and after it was done another rainstorm or
snowstorm undid most of it, and the parapets slid down, the water poured
in, and spaces were opened for German machine-gun fire, and there was
less head cover against shrapnel bullets which mixed with the raindrops,
and high explosives which smashed through the mud. The working parties
had a bad time and a wet one, in spite of waders and gum boots which
were served out to lucky ones. Some of them wore a new kind of hat, seen
for the first time, and greeted with guffaws--the "tin" hat which later
became the headgear of all fighting-men. It saved many head wounds, but
did not save body wounds, and every day the casualty lists grew longer
in the routine of a warfare in which there was "Nothing to report."

Our men were never dry. They were wet in their trenches and wet in their
dugouts. They slept in soaking clothes, with boots full of water, and
they drank rain with their tea, and ate mud with their "bully," and
endured it all with the philosophy of "grin and bear it!" and laughter,
as I heard them laughing in those places between explosive curses.

On the other side of the barbed wire the Germans were more miserable,
not because their plight was worse, but because I think they lacked the
English sense of humor. In some places they had the advantage of our men
in better trenches, with better drains and dugouts--due to an industry
with which ours could never compete. Here and there, as in the ground
to the north of Hooge, they were in a worse state, with such rivers
in their trenches that they went to enormous trouble to drain the
Bellewarde Lake which used to slop over in the rainy season. Those
field-gray men had to wade through a Slough of Despond to get to their
line, and at night by Hooge where the lines were close together--only
a few yards apart--our men could hear their boots squelching in the mud
with sucking, gurgling noises.

"They're drinking soup again!" said our humorists.

There, at Hooge, Germans and English talked to one another, out of their
common misery.

"How deep is it with you?" shouted a German soldier.

His voice came from behind a pile of sand-bags which divided the enemy
and ourselves in a communication trench between the main lines.

"Up to our blooming knees," said an English corporal, who was trying to
keep his bombs dry under a tarpaulin.

"So?... You are lucky fellows. We ar