are fireplaces (with Adam mantelpieces), and the one thing of which
the War Office never seems to stint us is coal. So "D" are warm,
anyhow. Thirty men live in the drawing-room. Its late tenant would
probably be impressed with its new scheme of upholstery. On the floor,
straw palliasses and gravy. On the walls, "cigarette photties"--by the
way, the children down here call them "fag picters." Across the room
run clothes-lines, bearing steaming garments (and tell it not in
Gath!) an occasional hare skin.

"C" are billeted in a village two miles away, and we see them but
rarely.

The rain has ceased for a brief space--it always does about parade
time--and we accordingly fall in. The men are carrying picks and
shovels, and make no attempt to look pleased at the circumstance. They
realise that they are in for a morning's hard digging, and very likely
for an evening's field operations as well. When we began, company
training a few weeks ago, entrenching was rather popular. More than
half of us are miners or tillers of the soil, and the pick and shovel
gave us a home-like sensation. Here was a chance, too, of showing
regular soldiers how a job should be properly accomplished. So we dug
with great enthusiasm.

But A Company have got over that now. They have developed into
sufficiently old soldiers to have acquired the correct military
attitude towards manual labour. Trench-digging is a "fatigue," to
be classed with, coal-carrying, floor-scrubbing, and other civilian
pursuits. The word "fatigue" is a shibboleth with, the British
private. Persuade him that a task is part of his duty as a soldier,
and he will perform it with tolerable cheerfulness; but once allow