Fighting the Boche Underground

I think this night, incidentally my birthday, was the worst night that I have ever spent in the trenches. We had to march in single file, my party of seventy men, separated into small groups, along a road which at that time was being terribly shelled by the Huns. We were obliged to keep to the road on account of the fact that all the trenches captured since the 1st of July by our infantry had previously been flattened out by our own and the German artillery-fire, and only small depressions showed their original location. We marched for the last mile in pitch-darkness in mud up to our knees and passed through several barrages of enemy fire. The bombardment on both sides was terrific.