Out of trenches again. I wanted to write you yesterday to tell you about the bombing raid of our last night in; but we had a full day, and were not relieved till late evening; so I got no chance of writing till this afternoon. But I can tell you we came out with our tails well up this time, and "A" Company putting on more side than ever. I dare say "D" Company, our closest rivals, will put up something pretty startling when we go in again. They're very determined to beat our record in every kind of strafing, and I'm bound to say they do put up some good shows. They've two more officers than we have now, and the Boche has discovered that they are very much out for business.

Whether we get Bavarians or Prussians opposite us it makes small odds; they've no earthly chance of a quiet time while we're in the line. The public at home read about the big things, and I suppose when they read that "The rest of the Front was quiet," they're inclined to wonder how we put our time in. Ah, well! the "quiet" of the dispatches wouldn't exactly suit a conscientious objector, I can assure you. It's a kind of "quiet" that keeps Master Boche pretty thoroughly on the hop. But on the whole, I'm rather glad the dispatches are like that. I'd be sorry to see 'em make a song and dance about these little affairs of ours. Only, don't you run away with the idea that when you read "Remainder of the Front quiet," it means the Boche was being left alone; for he isn't, not by long odds.

You will remember that opposite our extreme left I had discovered an S-shaped opening leading through the barbed wire to the Boche front line, so cut, no doubt, for the convenience of their patrols at night. We decided that we would make use of that opening for a bombing raid on our last night in. Now, you must understand that one of the chief uses of the barbed-wire entanglements is to keep off the prowling bomber. The entanglements extend to, say, forty to sixty paces from the trench. You cannot hope to make accurate practice in bomb-throwing at a distance of more than thirty yards. Consequently, as I explained before, to shy bombs into the average trench the bomber must worry his way through twenty paces or so of barbed-wire entanglements. It is very difficult to do that without attracting the attention of sentries, and impossible to do it quickly with or without noise. Hence you perceive the unpleasant predicament of the bomber when he has heaved his first bomb. He has offered himself as a target to the Boche machine-guns and rifles at a moment when he is in the midst of a maze of barbed wire, from which he can only hope to retreat slowly and with difficulty.

Then why not cut a lane through the Boche wire by means of shells, just before dark, and use that to bomb from after dark? Excellent. Only, if you were the Boche and we cut a lane through your wire one evening just before dark, wouldn't you train a machine-gun or two on that opening so that you could sweep it with fire at any moment you wished during the night; and wouldn't you have a dozen extra rifles with keen eyes behind 'em trained on the same spot; and wouldn't you be apt to welcome that nice little lane as a trap in which you could butcher English Tommies like sitting pheasants? Wouldn't you now?

Well, my business with the Battery Commander was to get on his right side and induce him to expend a certain number of rounds from his dear little guns that afternoon in cutting a nice line through the Boche entanglements opposite the extreme right of our line. It happened that, without interfering with the sort of sinking fund process by which the lords of the guns build up their precious reserves of ammunition, this particular lord was in a position to let us have a few rounds.

Of course, our attitude towards the gunners is not always strictly reasonable, you know. We are for ever wanting them to spend ammunition, while their obvious duty is to accumulate ammunition greedily and all the time against the hours of real need, so that when these hours come they may simply let everything rip—take the lid right off. However, for reasons of their own, apart from mine, it happened fortunately that the gunners were not at all averse from giving that bit of the Boche line a mild pounding; and, accordingly, they promised us a nice neat lane on the extreme right by nightfall.

We said nothing about the beautiful S-shaped lane on the extreme left, which Master Boche thought was known only to himself. Observe our extreme artfulness. We proceeded to train a grenade rifle on the extreme right, likewise a machine-gun. Then we proceeded to tell off our best bombers, and overhaul carefully a good supply of hand-grenades for use in the S-shaped opening on our extreme left.

Until midnight there was a certain amount of moonlight, and for several hours we kept the Boche very busy on our extreme right, where, with a trifling expenditure of ammunition, the guns had cut a lane for us through his barbed wire. I've no doubt at all that Fritz had several machine-guns concentrated on that spot, and a bunch of rifle-men too. He made up his mind he would have the English on toast in that lane, and we encouraged him to think so.

You know, at night-time it is not very easy to tell the difference between the explosion of a hand-grenade and that of a rifle-grenade. But whereas the hand-grenade could only be lobbed in from among the wire, the rifle-grenade could easily be sent over from our trench at that particular spot on our right. So we sent 'em over at all kinds of confusing intervals. And then, when Boche opened machine-gun fire across the lane, under the impression that our bombers were at work there, we replied with bursts of machine-gun fire on his parapet opposite the lane, thereby, I make no doubt, getting a certain number of heads. It is certain they would be looking out, and equally certain they would not be expecting fire from our trenches, when they thought we had our own bombers out there.

It was an attractive game, and we kept it going till nearly midnight. Then we stopped dead, leaving them to suppose we had given up hope of overcoming their watchfulness. We arranged to reopen the ball at 1.30 A.M. precisely, with rifle-grenades and machine-gun fire as might prove suitable, but with no end of a row in any case.

At one o'clock I started from Stinking Sap, on our extreme left, with twelve of our best bombers, each carrying an apronful of bombs. There wasn't a glimmer of any kind of light. We made direct for the S-shaped opening, and lay down outside the wire there. In our own trench, before starting, we had made all arrangements. I had six men on either side of me, and each man knew precisely what his particular job was. "The Peacemaker" never tires of insisting on that principle, and, of course, he is right. Nothing is any good unless it is worked out beforehand so that each man knows exactly his job, and concentrates on that without reference to anyone else, or any hanging about waiting instructions.

At 1.20 we began crawling down the S-shaped opening in our proper order. At 1.30 the first rifle-grenade ripped over from the extreme right of our line. Others followed in quick succession, and on the report of the sixth we jumped to our feet and ran forward, extending to right and left from me as we reached the inside of the wire, and chucking our first bombs—thirteen of 'em—as we got into position. It was so close there was no possibility of missing, and I can tell you thirteen bombs make some show when they all explode beautifully right inside a trench a few yards in front of you.

Then we all scrambled over the parapet down into the trench over a front of, say, thirty paces. The six men on my right hand at once turned to their right, and those on my left to their left. It worked splendidly. Each party travelled along the trench as quickly as it could, bombing over each traverse before rounding it. The row was terrific.

In that order each party went along six successive bays of the trench. Then immediately they began to reverse the process, travelling more slowly this time and bombing more thoroughly. They were working back on their centre now, you understand, still bombing outward, of course. We had the luck to strike a splendid piece of trench with no fewer than three important dug-outs in it, and we made a shambles of each of them. It was wildly exciting while it lasted, but I suppose we were not more than four or five minutes in the trench. We exploded thirty-two bombs during those few minutes, every single one of them with good effect; and when we scrambled out into the S-shaped opening again we took with us an undamaged Boche machine-gun and four prisoners, one of them wounded and three unwounded. We killed nine men in the trench, and a good round number in the three dug-outs. I had a bunch of maps and papers from the first of those dug-outs. And we didn't improve their trench or the dug-outs. Thirty-two bombs make a difference.

The machine-gun hampered us a bit, but I can tell you we made pretty good time getting across to Stinking Sap. The Boches were hopelessly confused by the whole business, and while we were crossing to the extreme left of our own line they were wildly blazing at our extreme right and pouring flares and machine-gun fire over the lane through their wire. Naturally, nobody was in the least exposed on our right, except perhaps the man operating the machine-gun, which probably did good execution among Boche observers of that neat little lane our artillery had cut for us.

It was a delightful show and cost us nothing in casualties, except two men very slightly wounded, one in the right foot and the other in the left hand and arm from our own bomb splinters. But, as our good old bombing Sergeant said, it "fairly put the wind up them bloomin' sauer-krauters." Incidentally, and owing far more to the fine behaviour of the men than to anything I did, it earned a lot of bouquets from different quarters for your

"Temporary Gentleman."

P.S.—Next day's report as served up to you and the public in the newspapers at home would, of course, and rightly enough no doubt, include our sector in the "remainder of the Front," which was "quiet." Or we might be included in a two-line phrase about "minor activities," or "patrols were active on various points of the line"—as they certainly are all the time.