_An officer whose letter from the trenches we published a few days ago
has since written a letter, dated Oct. 8, from which we take extracts:_
Last week I wrote that we had been in the trenches ten days. Now we have
been in them nearly three weeks, and still the fight goes on. We don't
mind it now. We hated it at first. The inaction made us ill. But we
recovered and began to make jokes about it. And now we don't care. We
eat and sleep, and eat again; and we dig, eternally dig, grubbing our
way deeper and deeper into the earth, and making covered ways that lead
hundreds of yards back from the firing line into safety.
And at the end of one of these I sit at this moment; away on the rear
slope of the hill which is our fortress. The sun is sinking far away
down the valley of the Aisne, and the river flickers in the distance
between lines of trees, while the little villages at the foot of the
slopes are gradually losing themselves in the evening mist. How lovely
to sit here in time of peace! Could one bear it after this, I wonder?
With all the beauty, there are sad things around me; signs of war every
way I look. To the right, a few yards off, are new-cut graves, and they
are putting up headstones, made by a reservist who is a mason in private
life. One man was killed yesterday, and we buried him after dark. There
was no service, because we had neither light nor book; but I said the
Lord's Prayer before the earth was thrown in, thinking there could be no
harm.
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