Did I tell you?--I don't think I did--that I had my first experience
of the trenches on Wednesday night, which was the first night the
Regiment took over its section of the line[2] from an English
Regiment of Territorials who are out beside us. It was full moon and
a splendid night for seeing,--and being seen! I went round the
section of the line allotted to our Battalion with the Colonel and
Major Shaw, but I don't think I was in the trenches for more than
perhaps an hour and a half altogether. It was a weird sight under
the moonlight. The line is very zig-zag and irregular--more so than
I had expected to find. It is pretty narrow, and not always easy to
pass along behind the men, but every here and there to the rear are
what are called 'dug-outs'--simply big holes in the clay, with wooden
frames supporting some sort of roof which gives head cover. Some of
these have a little straw in them, and everyone has a little brazier
for cooking--it is usually just a pail with holes in the sides of
it---and cooking goes on nearly all the time. The men use their mess
tins to make their tea and fry their bacon and cook their eggs (when
they get them), and make their stew at all times of day and night
when they are not actually standing to arms. We have loopholes and
periscopes and trench-pumps (for the water). They are a good deal
drier now than they have been all winter, but even yet there are
places in our section that I measured with a stick to be eighteen
inches deep in water on either side of the board that forms the
platform. Out in front of our line, between us and the Germans, are
our barbed wire entanglements and what are called our 'listening
posts.' You get out to these by going flat along a ditch with the
clay thrown up on one side to give some head cover.
[2] This was at 'La Bouttelerie,' near Fleurbaix.
Just now there are three of us living in one room of this farm--the
Quartermaster, the Interpreter, and myself. We sleep in it, cook in
it, and take our meals in it, and through it the farmer himself has
to pass on his way to and from his bedroom which opens off it.
Fortunately there is a window which can open. Needless to say, many
a thing wants washing, and your store of soap would be well-nigh
exhausted before things were made right, but we don't mind that much.
We wash at the pump in the farm-yard which is just outside the door.
The pump again is just six feet away from a large square manure and
straw heap which forms the centre of the farm-yard, and round this
square the farm buildings are placed; and these contain the farmer
and his family, the pigs, the hens, the horses, the calves, the
rabbits and the dogs and the rats! In a field at one side are my
horses, mules and wagons--there they sleep, and from there they go
forth daily to do their work.
There are characteristic touches in some shorter letters a little
later--characteristic of James's mechanical ingenuity on the one
hand, and of his love of music on the other:--