It is the strangest thing I have ever experienced. The authorities now try and stop our fellows answering. The _entente_ of last Christmas is not to be repeated! One of the officers in our battalion has shown me several German signatures on his pay-book (he was in the ranks then), given in friendly exchange in the middle of No Man’s Land last Christmas Day.
I have had my baptism of mud now. It tires me to think of it, and I have not the effort to write fully about it! The second time we were in these trenches the mud was two feet deep. Even our Company Headquarters, a cellar, was covered with mud and slime. Paradoses and communication trenches had fallen in, and the going was terrible. The sticky mud yoicked one’s boots off nearly, and it felt as if one’s foot would be broken in extricating it. We all wore gum-boots, of blue-black rubber, that come right up to the waist like fishermen’s waders. But the mud is everywhere, and we get our arms all plastered with it as we literally “reel to and fro” along the trench, every now and again steadying ourselves against slimy sand-bags. One or two men actually got stuck, and had to be helped out with spades; one fellow lost heart and left one of his gum-boots stuck in the mud, and turned up in my platoon in a stockinged foot, of course plastered thick with clay! We worked day and night. Gradually the problem is being tackled. Trench-boards, or ‘mats,’ are the best, like this:
They are put along the bottom of the trench, the long ‘runners’ resting on bricks taken from ruined houses, so as to raise the board and allow drainage underneath. If possible, a deep sump-pit is dug under the centre of the board. (The shaded part represents the sump-pit: the dotted lines are the sides of the trench; the whole drawing in plan.)”
Weariness. Mud. The next experience (not mentioned in my letter) was Death. On our immediate right was “C” Company. Here our trench runs out like this __Ʌ_, more or less, and the opposite trenches are very close together. Consequently it is a great place for “mining activity.” One evening we put up a mine; the next afternoon the Germans put up a countermine, and accompanied it with a hail of trench-mortars. I was on trench duty at the time, and had ample opportunity of observing the genus trench-mortar and its habits. One can see them approaching some time before they actually fall, as they come from a great height (in military terms, “with a steep trajectory”), and one can see them revolving as they topple down. Then they fall with a _thud_, and black smoke comes up and mud spatters all about. Most of them were falling in our second line and support trenches. I was patrolling up and down our front trench. We were “standing to” after the mine, and for half an hour it was rather a “hot shop.” I was delighted to find that I rather enjoyed it: seeing one or two of the new draft with the “wind up” a bit steadied me at once. I have hardly ever since felt the slightest nervousness under fire. It is mainly temperament. Our company had four casualties: one in the front trench, the three others in the platoon in support. “C” Company suffered more heavily. At 6.0 Edwards came on duty, and I was able to go in quest of two bombers who were said to be wounded. Getting near the place I came on a man standing half-dazed in the trench. “Oh, sirrh,” he cried, in the burring speech of a true Welshman. “A terench-mohrterh hass fall-en ericht in-ter me duck-out.” For the moment I felt like laughing at the man’s curious speech and look, but I saw that he was greatly scared: and no wonder. A trench mortar had dropped right into the mouth of his dug-out, and had half buried two of his comrades. We were soon engaged in extricating them. Both had bad head wounds, and how he escaped is a miracle. I helped carry the two men out and over the debris of flattened trenches to Company Headquarters. So, for the first time I looked upon two dying men, and some of their blood was on my clothes. One died in half an hour--the other early next morning. It was really not my job to assist: the stretcher-bearers were better at it than I, yet in this first little bit of “strafe” I was carried away by my instinct, whereas later I should have been attending to the living members of my platoon, and the defence of my sector. I left the company sergeant-major in difficulties as to whether Randall, the man who had so miraculously escaped, and who was temporarily dazed, should be returned as “sick” or “wounded.”