to prevent detachments of troops being sent from our front elsewhere.

I have said nothing of what goes on on our right and left;
but it is equally part and parcel of the whole game; this eight mile front
is constantly heavily engaged. At intervals, too, they bombard Ypres.
Our back lines, too, have to be constantly shifted on account of shell fire,
and we have desultory but constant losses there. In the evening
rifle fire gets more frequent, and bullets are constantly singing over us.
Some of them are probably ricochets, for we are 1800 yards, or nearly,
from the nearest German trench.


Thursday, April 29th, 1915.

This morning our billet was hit. We fire less these days,
but still a good deal. There was a heavy French attack on our left.
The "gas" attacks can be seen from here. The yellow cloud rising up
is for us a signal to open, and we do. The wind is from our side to-day,
and a good thing it is. Several days ago during the firing
a big Oxford-grey dog, with beautiful brown eyes, came to us in a panic.
He ran to me, and pressed his head HARD against my leg.
So I got him a safe place and he sticks by us. We call him Fleabag,
for he looks like it.

This night they shelled us again heavily for some hours --
the same shorts, hits, overs on percussion, and great yellow-green air bursts.
One feels awfully irritated by the constant din -- a mixture of anger
and apprehension.