"You'll be marked absent!"
"Don't trouble about that."
At ten o'clock our comrades return. Our absence has passed unnoticed, the very thing upon which our modesty and laziness combined were relying.
At noon—
"Quick! Muster in half an hour. We return to the trenches."
The usual stir and commotion in alarms of this kind.
Afternoon and night are spent very quietly in the grotto.
Thursday, 7th January.
The 24th occupies fresh positions between Bucy and Crouy, still in the first line. The weather is dreadful; it is useless to gaze through the loop-hole, you cannot see a yard in front of you.