Because the enemy was on the high ground and our men were in the low ground, many of our trenches were wet and waterlogged, even in summer, after heavy rain. In winter they were in bogs and swamps, up by St.-Eloi and southward this side of Gommecourt, and in many other evil places. The enemy drained his water into our ditches when he could, with the cunning and the science of his way of war, and that made our men savage.
I remember going to the line this side of Fricourt on an August day in '15. It was the seventeenth of August, as I have it in my diary, and the episode is vivid in my mind because I saw then the New Army lads learning one of the lessons of war in one of the foulest places. I also learned the sense of humor of a British general, and afterward, not enjoying the joke, the fatalistic valor of officers and men (in civil life a year before) who lived with the knowledge that the ground beneath them was mined and charged with high explosives, and might hurl them to eternity between the whiffs of a cigarette.
We were sitting in the garden of the general's headquarters, having a picnic meal before going into the trenches. In spite of the wasps, which attacked the sandwiches, it was a nice, quiet place in time of war. No shell same crashing in our neighborhood (though we were well within range of the enemy's guns), and the loudest noise was the drop of an over-ripe apple in the orchard. Later on a shrill whistle signaled a hostile airplane overhead, but it passed without throwing a bomb.
"You will have a moist time in some of the trenches," said the general (whose boots were finely polished). "The rain has made them rather damp... But you must get down as far as the mine craters. We're expecting the Germans to fire one at any moment, and some of our trenches are only six yards away from the enemy. It's an interesting place."
The interest of it seemed to me too much of a good thing, and I uttered a pious prayer that the enemy would not explode his beastly mine under me. It makes such a mess of a man.
A staff captain came out with a report, which he read: "The sound of picks has been heard close to our sap-head. The enemy will probably explode their mine in a few hours."