I go to my so-called bed, to try and snatch a few short hours' sleep, lulled by the music of the guns that have started their nightly hate.
Picture if you can a flight of twenty-four steps leading into the darkness of the underground. At the foot of this a room, if room it can be called, some thirteen feet by ten by seven high, the walls of tree trunks and railway sleepers, the roof of corrugated iron resting on railway lines; from this hang stalactites of rust, and large and loathsome insects creep about; above lives a colony of rats: such is our living-room, damp with a dampness that reaches one's bones and makes all things clammy to the touch. A couple of tables, a chair, and some boxes, such is our dining-room suite. From this a long, narrow, low passage leads to the kitchen, signalers' and 'phone room, officers' bunks and office. By day and night one stumbles among sleeping soldiers off duty, tired enough to find sleep on the boarded floor. My bed,--a couple of boards and some sand-bags,--is four feet from the ground, too narrow for safety, and yet I sleep. Men who previously grumbled at an eight-hour day, now do eighteen hours for seven days a week--such is war, and such is the spirit in which they take it.
Outside--or rather up above--a cold drizzle adds to the general discomfort, "pineapples" drop promiscuously about, but one can hear them coming, save when barrages are about, and the roar of gun and bursting shell drowns all else. One nearly got me this morning. I just ducked in time as it burst on the parapet behind where I was standing--a splinter caught my tin hat, but bounded off. In spite of all, this has been a cheery day. One learns to laugh at Fritz's efforts to kill one, and at the appalling waste of money he spends in misplaced shells; one laughs still more when they fall in his own lines from his own guns, and frantic cries of distress and protest, in the form of colored rockets, fill the air. LIFE, even with all its letters capitals, has its humors. Dire rumors of the postponement of our longed-for rest--but what is rumor, after all?
Half of another weary night has passed. I took a morning in bed (five hours, only disturbed twice) and so raised my sleep average to nearly four hours a day.