A machine-gun loosed a few shots in the fumbling style of her
kind when they feel for an opening. A couple of rifle shots
answered. They might have been half a mile away or a hundred
yards below. An adorable country! We climbed up till we
found once again a complete tea-garden of little sunk houses,
almost invisible in the brown-pink recesses of the thick
forest. Here the trenches began, and with them for the next
few hours life in two dimensions--length and breadth. You
could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere off the swept dry
ground, for the steep slopes favoured draining, there was no
lack of timber, and there was unlimited labour. It had made
neat double-length dug-outs where the wounded could be laid in
during their passage down the mountain side; well-tended
occasional latrines properly limed; dug-outs for sleeping and
eating; overhead protections and tool-sheds where needed, and,
as one came nearer the working face, very clever cellars
against trench-sweepers. Men passed on their business; a
squad with a captured machine-gun which they tested in a
sheltered dip; armourers at their benches busy with sick
rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition;
long processions of single blue figures turned sideways
between the brown sunless walls. One understood after a while
the nightmare that lays hold of trench-stale men, when the
dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes till, after
centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling out
again into the white blaze and horror of the mined front--he
who thought he had almost reached home!