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I have just been over to get some practice with the Lewis gun. They are rather amusing toys, for you get rid of 100 shots in ten seconds, as you are probably aware....
I took up a mechanic who is a good gunner, to act as an escort to one of our men who was going photographing. The corporal was awfully amusing. He was always getting up and turning round, or kneeling on his seat looking at me and signalling to me. I thought several times he was going to get out and walk along the planes. The flight was quite uneventful. Next time I write I hope to be able to tell you what the trenches are like; at present, owing to low clouds and bad weather, I haven’t been able to look at them.
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Map study.
On Thursday I went up with an officer observer on a patrol, to look for Huns and gun flashes, etc. We could not see anything above 3,000 feet; so we came down to 2,500 feet and flew up and down the lines—well on this side, though—for a couple of hours. I thus got a splendid view of the trenches on both sides for miles, and it was awfully interesting to see the fields in some places behind our lines, originally green pasture land, now almost blotted out with shell holes and mine craters.
There has been a craze here for gardening recently, and people are sowing seeds sent over from England, and building rockeries and what not. A counter-craze of dug-out digging was started by our C.O. so as to provide a place of retreat if over-enthusiastic Huns come over some day to bomb us. The dug-out was almost finished when the rain came and converted it into a swimming-bath. The dug-out mania has now ceased.
Thanks for your advice about studying maps. If I carried it out as you suggest in all my spare time, this is something like what my diary would have been for the past week:
| 3.30 a.m. | Wakened for early patrol work. Weather is dud, so study maps until: |
| 8.30 a.m. | Breakfast. Raining, so return to room to study maps. |
| 12.30 p.m. | Snatch ten minutes for lunch, and get back to maps. |
| 4.30 p.m. | Have some tea, having violent argument meanwhile on contoured and uncontoured maps. More study. |
| 8 p.m. | Break off map study for dinner; then go to bed and study maps till “lights out.” |
| Here ends another derned dull day. |
Still I quite understand what prompted your advice. If one does get lost, however, one has only to fly west for a few minutes till one crosses the lines, and then inquire, as we never go far over the lines unless escorted.