Very many thanks for the parcel with the horse-hide mitts and the torch refills, both of which will be greatly appreciated. The mitts are the best things of the kind I've seen for trench work, and as for electric torches, I don't know what we should do without them.

I've come below for a sleep, really. Taffy Morgan was very much off colour yesterday, and is far from fit to-day. I had to take his duty as well as my own last night, so came off pretty short in the matter of rest. But I must stop to tell you about the lark we had last night; the jolliest thing that's happened since we came in, and no end of a score for "A" Company. My batman tells me "B" are mad as hatters about it.

Our signalling officer happened to be along the front yesterday afternoon with a brand-new telescope that someone had sent the C.O., a very fine instrument. Signals wasn't interested in our bit of line, as it happens, but was dead nuts on some new Boche machine-gun emplacement or other away on "B's" left. When he was coming back through our line I got him to lend me the new glass while he had some tea and wrote reports in our dug-out. Perhaps you think there's not much need of a telescope when the Boche line is less than a couple of hundred yards away. Well, now you'd hardly believe how difficult it is to make things out. At this time of the year the whole of this place is full of mist, for one thing. And then, you see, the ground in front is studded all over with barbed wire, stakes, long rank grass, things thrown out: here and there an old log, and, here and there, of course, a dead body. One has to look along the ground level, since to look from a higher level would mean exposure, and I can assure you it's surprisingly easy to miss things. I've wasted a good many rounds myself, firing at old rags or bits of wood, or an old cape in the grass among the Boche wire, feeling sure I'd got a sniper. The ground is pretty much torn up, too, you understand, by shells and stuff, and that makes it more difficult.

Well, I was looking out from a little sheltered spot alongside the entrance to what we call Stinking Sap. It has rather a rottener smell than most trenches, I think. And all of a sudden I twigged something that waked me right up. It was nothing much: just a shovel sticking up against a little mound. But it led to other things. A yard away from where this shovel lay the C.O.'s fine glass enabled me to make out a gap in the wet, misty grass. You may be sure I stared jolly hard, and presently the whole thing became clear to me. The Boches had run out a new sap to fully sixty yards from their fire trench, which at this particular point is rather far from ours: over 250 yards, I suppose. It was right opposite our own Stinking Sap, and I suppose the head of it was not more than 100 yards from the head of Stinking Sap. There was no Boche working there then; not a sign of any movement. I made sure of that. Then I got my compass and trench map, and took a very careful bearing. And then I toddled round to Company Headquarters and got hold of "the Peacemaker," without letting Signals know anything about it. If the O.C. liked to let Battalion Headquarters know, that was his business.

Of course, "the Peacemaker" was delighted. "It's perfectly clear they must have cut it last night," he said. "And as sure as God made little apples, they'll be going on with it to-night. Let's see, the moon rises about 9.45. Splendid! They'll get to work as soon as it's dark."

He was awfully decent about it, and agreed to let me go, since I'd had the luck to spot it. As a matter of fact, he did the more important spotting himself. He twigged what I'd overlooked: a whacking big shell-hole, shallow but wide, about fifteen or twenty feet to one side of their sap-head; an absolutely ideal spot for cover, and no more than a hundred yards from the head of Stinking Sap. I decided to take Corporal Slade with me, because he's such a fine bomber, besides being as cool as a cucumber and an all-round good chap. You remember he was with me that time in Master Boche's trench. Somehow, the thing got round before tea-time, and the competition among the men was something awful. When Slade gave it out that I was taking all the men I wanted from No. 1 Platoon, there was actually a fight between one of my lot and a fellow named Ramsay, of No. 3 Platoon; a draper, I'll trouble you, and a pillar of his chapel at home. Then a deputation of the other Platoon Sergeants waited on "the Peacemaker," and in the end, to save bloodshed, I agreed to take Corporal Slade and one man from my own Platoon, and one man from each of the other three Platoons. To call for volunteers for work over the parapet with our lot is perfectly hopeless. You must detail your men, or the whole blessed Company would swarm out over the sticks every time, especially if there's the slightest hint of raiding or bombing.

"The Peacemaker's" idea was that we must reach that shell-hole from the end of Stinking Sap, if possible, before the Boche started work in his new sap, because once he started he'd be sure to have a particularly sharp look-out kept, and might very well have a covering party outside as well. Before it was dark my fellows were champing their bits in Stinking Sap, fretting to be off. If one gave the beggars half a chance they'd be out in the open in broad daylight. But, of course, I kept 'em back. There was no reason why Boche should be in a violent hurry to start work, and I was most anxious he shouldn't suspect that we suspected anything.

As it turned out, we were all lying in that shell-hole close to his new sap for three-quarters of an hour before a single Boche made a move. There was a fine rain all the time, and it was pitch dark. The only thing we didn't like was the fact that all the flares and parachute lights ever made seemed to be being sent up from the Boche line, right alongside this new sap. However, we lay perfectly still and flat, hands covered and faces down, and as long as you do that all the flares in the world won't give you away much, in ground as full of oddments and unevenness as that is.

By and by Slade gave a little tug at my jerkin. I listened hard, and just made out footsteps, probably in the Boche fire trench itself, near the entrance to their new sap. Two or three minutes later we began really to enjoy ourselves. As far as we could make out Fritz hadn't a notion that we were on to his game. Six or eight of 'em came shuffling along the sap, carrying picks and shovels, and jabbering and growling away nineteen to the dozen. We could hear every sound. One fellow, anyhow, was smoking. We got the whiff of that. We could hear 'em spit, and, very nearly, we could hear them breathe. I did wish I knew a little more German than "Donnerwetter" and "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

I could feel the man on my left (the draper from No. 3) quivering like a coursing greyhound in a leash, and had to whisper to him to wait for the word. But Corporal Slade on my right might have been on the barrack square. I saw him use a match to pick his teeth while he listened. I'd rehearsed my fellows letter perfect in our own trench before we started, and when the Boches were fairly under way digging, I gave the signal with my left hand. There was a bomb in my right. Waiting for it as I was, I could distinctly hear the safety-pins come out of our six bombs, and could even hear the breathed murmur of the pugnacious draper at my shoulder:

"A hundred an' one, a hundred an' two, a hundred an' three!" (He was timing the fuse of his bomb, exactly as I'd told 'em.)

And then we tore a big hole in the night. Our six bombs landed, one on the edge and the other five plumb in the sap-head before us, right in the middle of the six or eight Boches digging there. Two seconds after they left our hands they did their job. It was less than two seconds really. And when the rending row was done we heard only one Boche moaning, so I knew that at least six or seven were "gone West" for keeps, and would strafe no more Englishmen.

Now the idea had been that directly our job was done we should bolt for the head of Stinking Sap. But, while we'd been lying there, it had occurred to me that the Boches, knowing all about what distance bombs could be thrown, and that we must be lying in the open near their sap-head, ought to be able to sweep that ground with machine-gun fire before we could get to Stinking Sap, and that, having done that, they would surely send a whole lot more men down their new sap, to tackle what was left of us that way. Therefore I'd made each of my fellows carry four bombs in his pockets: twenty-four among the lot of us. And we'd only used six. Quite enough, too, for the Boches in that sap. Therefore, again, we now lay absolutely still, and just as close as wax, while Fritz rained parachute lights, stars, flares, and every kind of firework in the sky, and, just as I had fancied, swept his sap-head with at least a thousand rounds of machine-gun bullets, not one of which so much as grazed us, where we lay spread-eagled in the mud of that shell-hole.

And then—dead silence.

"Get your bombs ready, lads," I told my fellows. In another few seconds we heard the Boches streaming along their narrow new sap. They took it for granted we had cleared back to our line, and they made no attempt to disguise their coming. In fact, from the rate at which they rushed along that narrow ditch I could almost swear that some came without rifles or anything. We waited till the near end of the sap was full, and then: "A hundred and one," etc. We gave 'em our second volley, and immediately on top of it our third. It must have been a regular shambles. Slade and I, by previous arrangement, lobbed ours over as far as ever we could to the left, landing quite near the beginning of the sap, and so getting the Boches who were only just leaving their own fire trench. Then I laid my hand on the draper to prevent his throwing, and Slade and the other three gave their last volley, and bolted full pelt for Stinking Sap.

There was no bucking at all in the part of the sap near us. The Boches there wouldn't trouble anyone any more, I fancy. But a few seconds after Slade disappeared, we heard a fresh lot start on their way down the sap from their fire trench. We gave 'em up to about "A hundred and three" and a half, and then we let 'em have our last two bombs, well to the left, and ourselves made tracks like greased lightning for Stinking Sap. The luck held perfectly, and Slade was hauling the draper in over the parapet of Stinking Sap before a sound came from the Boches' machine-guns. And then, by Gad! they opened on us. They holed my oilskin coat for me, as I slid in after Ramsay, and spoiled it. I've jotted it down against 'em and in due course they shall pay. But not one of my crowd got a scratch, and we reckon to have accounted for at the very least twenty Boches, maybe double that—a most splendid lark.

What makes "B" Company rather mad is that, strictly speaking, this new Boche sap is a shade nearer their line than ours. The C.O. came up to look at it this morning, on the strength of our O.C.'s morning situation report, and was most awfully nice to me about it. He said we did well to wait for the Boches' coming down from their line after our first scoop, and that plans must be made to fit circumstances, and not held to be ends in themselves, and all that kind of thing—initiative, you know, and so on—very nice indeed he was. And the best of it is our artillery has registered on that sap this morning, and this afternoon is just about going to blow it across the Rhine. So altogether "A" Company is feeling pretty good, if you please, and has its tail well up. So has your

"Temporary Gentleman."