Saturday July 29, 1916

Last night we helped to sandbag the sides on an extra wide communications trench built especially for stretcher-bearer parties, for the ordinary com trench is a bit too narrow. In fact in some places the sides seem to almost rub elbows with each other. It was a pretty warm spot for a cool night for Fritzie just seems to know he wasn't welcome. Well he came with machine gun bullets, whiz-bangs and a few other dirty mean remarks that made us keep our heads down. We had to bow to him whether we wanted to or not, as it were. However we were able to say about 1:30 a.m. "Y'didn't tech me," and with visions before us of an early morning breakfast tea, (we had a bit of bread and jam each which last us for a day) we wended our very weary way home-wards.

I never knew that a road could be so mean it seemed full of holes and lumps, just as a fellow went to step hard thinking it was alright the road would come up and hit his heel a jolt. Then when he went to oblige the next bump by stepping light bump would side step him and he would land in a hole. Then a stump would smack him one on his pet toe. These blessings are all born of Mr. Bad-Road and Mr. Dark-Night. That road was paved with damns all the way back to Dickebusch.