there are boards or faggots down to walk on by constant [?] the mud is kept down, where there are neither of those the mud in many places come over your knees. The men and officers sleep in little covered in shelters about 2 ft - 3ft high. You crawl in & out. This bit of the time however is the worst & and hard to improve as we are only 70 yards away from the Germans. Occasionally we hold converse & mutually agree not to fire on our working party at night but the blighters can not be trusted. You can out move about at night & even when getting in & out of the trenches is very exciting. . The Germans are always blazing away & the bullets come pretty close. In the trenches themselves if a man gets hit it's through the head as a rule & that is FINIS. That is what makes this trench work so trying. We have had a few casualties mostly in our company. There is a lot of humour in it all. We jog along never know when it is going