that trench as to prevent German supports from reaching their front line
without clambering into the open fields where our shrapnel is falling
like hail.

But under those two streams of overhead traffic is a third quite easily
distinguishable. It comes with short, descending screams--sheafs of them
together.

At the end of each there is a momentary glare over the sandbags, and the
bang as of an exploding rocket.

That is German shrapnel, bursting in the air and projecting its pellets
in a cone like a shot-gun. A little to the south of us there is a much
more formidable crash, always recurring several times in the minute. We
always know when that crash is coming by a certain fierce orange glare
which lights up the tops of our sandbags immediately before we hear the
sound. Three or four times the crash and the glare came together, and a
big cloud of stuffy-smelling white smoke drifted low overhead, and bits
of mud and earth cascaded down upon us from the sky above; and just for
two minutes the sheaf of four shells from some particular field battery,
which sent them passing as regularly as a clock about five times a
minute overhead, seemed to lower and burst just above us; and one or
two odd high-explosive bursts--4.2, I should say--crept in close upon us
from the rear, while the parapet gave several ponderous jumps towards us
from the other direction. One would swear that it had shifted inwards a
good inch, though I do not suppose it had. The dazzling orange flashes
and crashes close around us were rather like a bad dream. One could not
resist the reflection that often comes over a man when he begins his
holiday with a rough sea crossing, "How on earth did I ever imagine that
there was advantage to be obtained out of this?"