that moment I realized that here was the war, and that I was in it.

I ploughed along for about four miles down uninteresting mud
canals--known on maps as roads--until, finally, I entered Nieppe.

The battalion, I heard from a passing soldier, was having its last day
in billets prior to going into the trenches again. They were billeted at
a disused brewery at the other end of the town. I went on down the
squalid street and finally found the place.

A crowd of dirty, war-worn looking soldiers were clustered about the
entrance in groups. I went in through the large archway past them into
the brewery yard. Soldiers everywhere, resting, talking and smoking. I
inquired where the officers' quarters were, and was shown to the brewery
head office. Here I found the battalion officers, many of whom I knew,
and went into their improvised messroom, which, in previous days, had
apparently been the Brewery Board room.

I found everything very dark, dingy and depressing. That night the
battalion was going into the trenches again, and last evenings in
billets are not generally very exhilarating. I sat and talked with those
I knew, and presently the Colonel came in, and I heard what the orders
were for the evening. I felt very strange and foreign to it all, as
everyone except myself had had their baptism of trench life, and,
consequently, at this time I did not possess that calm indifference,
bred of painful experience, which is part of the essence of a true
trench-dweller.

The evening drew on. We had our last meal in billets--sardines, bread,
butter and cake sort of thing--slung on to the bare table by the soldier