Men, Women and Guns by H.C. McNeile — Read

All the next day the battalion worked on the trenches. To men used to / the water and slush of Ypres they came as a revelation -- the trenches and / dug-outs in the chalk district. Great caves had been hollowed out of the / ground under the barbed wire in front, with two narrow shafts sloping / steeply down from the trench to each, so small and narrow that you must / crawl on hands and knees to get in or out. And up these shafts they / hauled and pushed the dead Germans. Caught like rats, they had been / gassed and bombed before they could get out, though some few had managed / to crawl up after the assaulting battalions had passed over and to open / fire on the supporting ones as they came up. Jim and his men threw them / out to be buried at night, and they confined their attention during the / day to building up the trenches and shifting the parapet round. German / sandbags look like an assortment out of a cheap village draper's -- pink / and black and every kind of colour, but they hold earth, which is the / main point. So with due care the battalion patted them into shape again / and then took a little sleep.

That night they moved on again. Now the first trench which they had / occupied had been behind Loos, and there our new line was a mile away to / their front on the side of a hill. The place they were now bound for was / nothing like so peaceful. It was that part of the original German front / where their old line marked the limit of our advance. We had not pushed / on beyond it, and the fighting was continuous and bloody.