To-day is specially busy, as the Battalion goes to-night to take its turn in the trenches, but there has not been much firing in our portion of the line recently.... I have been riding a good deal, and shall ride more this coming week probably, because my transport is in a field about three miles from the trenches, and I have got to get backwards and forwards all the time.
Did I tell you?--I don't think I did--that I had my first experience of the trenches on Wednesday night, which was the first night the Regiment took over its section of the line[2] from an English Regiment of Territorials who are out beside us. It was full moon and a splendid night for seeing,--and being seen! I went round the section of the line allotted to our Battalion with the Colonel and Major Shaw, but I don't think I was in the trenches for more than perhaps an hour and a half altogether. It was a weird sight under the moonlight. The line is very zig-zag and irregular--more so than I had expected to find. It is pretty narrow, and not always easy to pass along behind the men, but every here and there to the rear are what are called 'dug-outs'--simply big holes in the clay, with wooden frames supporting some sort of roof which gives head cover. Some of these have a little straw in them, and everyone has a little brazier for cooking--it is usually just a pail with holes in the sides of it---and cooking goes on nearly all the time. The men use their mess tins to make their tea and fry their bacon and cook their eggs (when they get them), and make their stew at all times of day and night when they are not actually standing to arms. We have loopholes and periscopes and trench-pumps (for the water). They are a good deal drier now than they have been all winter, but even yet there are places in our section that I measured with a stick to be eighteen inches deep in water on either side of the board that forms the platform. Out in front of our line, between us and the Germans, are our barbed wire entanglements and what are called our 'listening posts.' You get out to these by going flat along a ditch with the clay thrown up on one side to give some head cover.
[2] This was at 'La Bouttelerie,' near Fleurbaix.