seem to have no pet name in the service.

It was a poisonously blind country. The woods blocked all
sense of direction above and around. The ground was at any
angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by
the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us the
respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse,
ghastly blue sticks of timber--an assembly of leper-trees
round a bald mountain top. "That's where we're going," said
Alan. "Isn't it an adorable country?"

TRENCHES

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