Some of the men have shovels, others work with knives and bayonets, but principally with their hands. In half an hour every man has erected a small parapet.
Perspiration is pouring from us. At that moment it begins to rain. We continue to dig.
In front of the workers some of the men keep watch, hidden in the beetroots. They try to see through the darkness if anything stirs in front.
About two in the morning my hole is about three feet deep, and is protected by nearly two feet of earth. I am covered with mud. Utterly exhausted, I fling myself down by the side of the trench, and, wrapping my cover over my head to protect me from the rain, I fall into a heavy sleep and begin to snore. My neighbour wakes me with a crack on the head from his shovel handle.
"Idiot! do you want them to use us as a target?" he remarks affably.
"I'm too sleepy to care whether they do or not."
Whereupon I turn over on to my side and fall asleep again. An hour afterwards I awake, quite frozen, and begin to dig with renewed vigour. The deeper the trench becomes the fewer precautions do we take. At dawn we chatter and laugh aloud. The Germans make no sign of life; perhaps they are afraid of the rain.
What luck! We are relieved by two fresh squadrons. We reach the second line, listening as we go to the good-humoured banter of men who have spent the night under cover.
A pretty picture we make! For a hood I have flung over my head a potato-sack, and over my shoulders a wet bed-cover, as our grandmothers used to do with their cashmere shawls. Hands and coats, képis and puttees are all covered with sticky yellow mud, whilst our rifles are useless, owing to the barrel being stopped up and the mechanism filled with earth.