of the trenches.

Looking from our lines yesterday across a valley one noticed a German
trench running up the farther side, the grey mud parapet heaped out,
like the earth of one long, continuous grave, on both sides of the
trench. Behind that trench, along its whole length, as far as we could
see, ran a sinuous thread of light-coloured soil. It was the beaten
track by which the Germans had moved up and down their trench. They
could not move _in_ the trench, so when they wanted to move they had to
hop up and move outside of it. If we were sniping by day they could not
move at all; and the track had probably been made by Germans moving at
night. It hugged the trench in case we started shooting or
shelling--when the Germans could at once jump back into the mud again.

The Germans in some parts of the Somme battlefield have been going down
with frostbite in great numbers, so great as to put at least one
battalion out of action. This is through getting feet wet and frozen in
muddy trenches. To reach their front line, last month, in these valleys
in front of Bapaume and Le Transloy, has been quite impossible to the
Germans unless they went up over the open, or used such trenches as a
self-respecting man could scarcely enter. They came up, as would any
other soldiers under the same circumstances, across the open land. Even
then there were places which a man could scarcely pass. I know a man
who, in that same sunken road at Le Barque, pulled two of his comrades
by force out of the mud--an everyday matter. They left their boots and
socks in the mud behind them.

If a man is wounded in some of those German trenches it takes eight men
to get him to the dressing station and five hours to arrive there, and
very much longer if there is any fighting in progress. One would not say