On one side of the canal is a bank which is in great demand by the machine gunners, who [pg 139] are able to get a certain amount of height and observation of their fire. The general has ordered a field gun to take up a position on this bank. He refers to it as his “Sniping eighteen-pounder.” It is firing at seven hundred yards right at the German line and smashes up their parapet in a style that is pretty to watch. The machine gunners are in a great state, because the enemy will soon be “searching” with his artillery for the eighteen-pounder and the lairs of the smaller hidden guns will suffer.
The men are hunting for lice in their underwear. This is the kind of conversation that is coming through from the next cellars: “I've got you beat—that's forty-seven.” “Wait a minute”—a sound of tearing cloth—“but look at this lot, mother and young.” “With my forty and these you'll have to find some more.” They were betting on the number they could find. I peel off my shirt myself and burn them off with a candle. I glory in the little pop they make when the heat gets to them. All the insect powder [pg 140] in the world has been tried out on them and they've won.
All sentries here are doubled; one thing it's safer, and another it's company; even when things are quiet, rats and mice scamper about and it sets your nerves on end. Things which are inanimate during the day become alive at night. Trees seem to walk about. I wonder what it tastes like to have a real meal in which tinned food does not figure; fancy a tablecloth; my tablecloth is a double sheet of newspaper, and even then I can't have a new one every day.
Had a good night's rest; came in about twelve o'clock and slept until eight-thirty this morning. One eye is completely closed up by a sting.
A German aeroplane has been hovering over our positions looking for my gun, so we have stopped firing and all movement. I know just how the chicken feels when the hawk hovers over it. Few people realize how much aeroplanes figure in this war, [pg 141] for war would be much different without them. They do the work of Cavalry only in the sky. Whenever they come over, the sentries blow three blasts on their whistles and everybody runs for cover or freezes; guns stop firing and are covered up with branches made on frames. If men are caught in the open they stand perfectly still and do not look up, for on the aeroplane photographs faces at certain heights show light; dugouts are covered over with trees, straw or grass. We use aeroplane photographs a great deal; they show trenches distinctly and look very like the canals on Mars.
The Huns have been “hating” the road one quarter of a mile away all the morning. That doesn't worry us a bit as long as they don't come any closer. I'm willing always to share up on the shelling.
This order has just been issued. It speaks for itself:—
All ranks are warned that bombs and grenades must not be used for fishing and killing game.
I went over another farm to-day. It is one of the well-ventilated kind, punched full of holes. In the kitchen, stables and outhouses there was a most wonderful collection of junk: ammunition, British and French bandoliers, old sheepskin coats abandoned by the British troops from last winter, smashed rifles, bayonets, meat tins, parts of broken equipment, sandbags, stacks of rotten potatoes and three dead cows. The fruit trees are laden with fruit, and vines are growing up the houses with their bunches of green grapes.