4 a.m.—The 9.2's are just beginning to talk.
Here is a true story. One of our trenches at Givenchy was being pounded by German shells at the time of N. Ch. A man saw his brother killed on one side of him and another man on the other. He went on shooting over the parapet; then the parapet got knocked about, and still he wasn't hit. He seized his brother's body and the other man's and built them up into the parapet with sandbags, and went on shooting.
When the stress was over and he could leave off, he looked round and saw what he was leaning against. "Who did that?" he said. And they told him.
They get awfully sick at the big-print headlines in some of the papers—"The Hill 60 Thrill"!
"Thrill, indeed! There's nothing thrilling about ploughing over parapets into a machine-gun, with high explosives bursting round you,—it's merely beastly," said a boy this evening, who is all over shrapnel splinters.
Saturday, May 8th, 9 a.m.—This is Der Tag. Could anybody go to bed and undress?
I have been cutting dressings all night. One of the most stabbing things in this war is seeing the lines of empty motor ambulances going up to bring down the wrecks who at this moment are sound and fit, and all absolutely ready to be turned into wrecks.
10.30 p.m.—Der Tag was a wash-out, but it is to begin at 1.15 to-night. (It didn't!)
The tension is more up than ever. A boy who has just come in with a poisoned heel (broken-hearted because he is out of it, while his battalion moves up) says, "You'll be having them in in cartloads over this."
Sunday, May 9th, 1.30 a.m.—The Lions are roaring in full blast and lighting up the sky.