burst--the world or the universe: either might split from end to end.
The dust and smoke are gradually making everything invisible. Crumps
come whistling and heaving up great clouds of heavy blackness. We look
at our watches. Zero hour in five minutes. The aeroplanes buzzing aloft,
and the sausages sitting among the low clouds, inert and so
vulnerable-looking. Can there be anything left? Can a single soul live?


[Illustration: TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE
They don't look much like trenches, because they were battered to
pieces. A 'dump' on the near horizon was hit by a Boche shell. It blazed
and crackled and smouldered all night, a drifting column of dull pink
smoke.]


_September 9._

Surely we shall get through. Even in spite of the rain. The rain has
made the country into a quagmire.

Reconnoitred the front trenches to-day with the Colonel, in a particular
part where everything is at sixes and sevens, and no one quite
knows what we haven't or have got. Most odd. Shells of all calibres
bursting on every side--corpses, odours unspeakable.

[Sidenote: DELVILLE WOOD]

You see, things are expected to happen soon, and so I'm anxious to know
all about it. This part of the line is terrific.