this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has been
heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday
seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by being floored
with a wooden pathway which runs on piles--underneath which is the
gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench. Sometimes
the water rises in the communication trenches so that the boards float
or disappear, and if you happen to step into an interval between them
you may quite well sink to your waist in thin clay mud. The actual
firing trenches and the dug-outs there are mostly dry by comparison,
except where the accumulated task of draining them has been gaining on
some regiment which garrisons them, and the rear of the line is a morass
of foul-smelling clay.

This difficulty never really reached us in Gallipoli, though we might
possibly have found the trenches falling in upon us in the rains of
winter if we had stayed. The trenches in France are full of traces of
old dug-outs and mouldering sandbags, collapsed through rain in the dim
past before the timbering of all works was looked on as a necessity. In
Anzac we never had the timber for this, and one doubts if we ever could
have had it had we stayed. The soil there was dry and held well, and the
trenches were deep and very elaborate to a degree which one has not seen
approached in France. There may be some parts here where such trenches
are possible, and where they exist; but I have not seen them. It must be
remembered that in many places in France there are stretches of line
where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter, because you
meet water as soon as you scratch the surface; and therefore both our
line and the German are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug
down. The curious thing is that in the trenches themselves you scarcely
realise the difference. Your outlook there is bounded in either case by
two muddy walls over which you cannot wisely put your head in the