tin--one of the smallest shelters I
have ever been in. It was possible to sit down, but not to lie down,
and the floor was inches deep in cold mud. Here I found two very
disconsolate officers awaiting relief. They seemed to be nearly
perished with the cold and wet, and quite worn out by their cheerless
sojourn in the trenches. The trench lay on the slope of a slight hill,
the crest being about 200 yards away. The enemy were not close, their
position was out of sight and unknown. But to the left Logeast Wood
was clearly visible, and the enemy were known to be there. Our trench
ended abruptly on the left, and the nearest British troops on this
flank were some way off and more to the east, so that there was a
considerable gap in the line here. On the right of course we were in
touch with B Company, who were commanded by Lieut. Affleck, M.C., a
veteran of the Houthulst Forest battle, and one of our most
redoubtable warriors in the 7th N.F. I knew that I need not worry
about my right flank! No smoke from fires could be allowed in the
trenches, and cooking had to be done over small fires of fine wood
splinters. When morning came it was possible to have a better look
round. All the reserve ammunition, about 5000 rounds, had been pulled
out of the boxes, and the bandoliers were mostly buried in the mud. It
was a great business clearing the trench of mud and salvaging and
cleaning the ammunition. The enemy did not know where we were. All
morning three of his aeroplanes, flying low, hovered about our little
trench, occasionally firing bursts at us with their machine-guns. We
only replied with an occasional shot, and of course they could not
tell where that came from. At any rate the German guns let the trench
alone and poured a stream of heavy shells all day and night into the
village behind us and into the hedges at the east end. The fact
appeared quite clearly later on that the enemy could not locate our
front line. A messenger dog, belonging to the enemy, was captured at
this time near Bucquoy, bearing a message in German as follows: 'The
affair of Bucquoy is off for the present, as we don't know where Tommy
is.' It was well indeed for our two companies that the drain trench
was not suspected by the enemy. There were no traverses in it from one
end to the other, and a very few well-aimed shells would have blown us
to pieces.

That night (April 2) the British forces made a counter-attack at
Ayette and drove the enemy as far ba