In the night there was much patrolling and bursts of machine-gun fire, and a few snipers, and enormous labours at the 'improvement of the line,' wiring and revetting, and exquisite work with sand-bags.
It was all very gentle and friendly and artificial, and we were happy together.
Burnett had left us, on some detached duty or other, and in that gentler atmosphere Eustace was a good companion again.
Men grew lusty and well, and one could have continued there indefinitely without much injury to body or mind. But sometimes on a clear night we saw all the southern sky afire from some new madness on the Somme, and knew that somewhere in France there was real war. The correspondents wrote home that the regiments 'condemned so long to the deadening inactivity of trench warfare were longing only for their turn at the Great Battle.' No doubt they had authority: though I never met one of those regiments. For our part we were happy where we were. We had had enough for the present.
But I digress. And yet--no. For I want you to keep this idea of the diversity of war conditions before you, and how a man may be in a fighting unit for many months and yet go unscathed even in spirit. Or in the most Arcadian parts of the battle area he may come alone against some peculiar shock from which he never recovers. It is all chance.
We made Harry scout officer again, and he was very keen. Between us and the German lines was a honeycomb of old disused trenches where French and Germans had fought for many months before they sat down to watch each other across this maze. They were all overgrown now with flowers and thick grasses, but for the purposes of future operations it was important to know all about them, and every night Harry wriggled out and dropped into one of these to creep and explore, and afterwards put them on the map. Sometimes I went a little way with him, and I did not like it. It was very creepy in those forgotten alleys, worse than crawling outside in the open, I think, because of the intense blackness and the infinite possibilities of ambush.