After we have been in the dug-outs two hours our own shells begin to fall in the trench.
This is the third time in four weeks.
If it were simply a mistake in aim no one would say anything, but the truth is that the barrels are worn out. The shots are often so uncertain that they land within our own lines.
To-night two of our men were wounded by them.
The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen.
We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty.
Over us Chance hovers.
If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall.
It is this Chance that makes us indifferent.
A few months ago I was sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit some friends in another dug-out.
On my return nothing more was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit.
I went back to the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out.
In the interval it had been buried.
It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.
In a bombproof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed.
No soldier outlives a thousand chances.
But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
We must look out for our bread.
The rats have become much more numerous lately because the trenches are no longer in good condition.
Detering says it is a sure sign of a coming bombardment.
The rats here are particularly repulsive, they are so fat—the kind we all call corpse-rats.
They have shocking, evil, naked faces, and it is nauseating to see their long, nude tails.
They seem to be mighty hungry.
Almost every man has had his bread gnawed.
Kropp wrapped his in his waterproof sheet and put it under his head, but he cannot sleep because they run over his face to get at it.
Detering meant to outwit them: he fastened a thin wire to the roof and suspended his bread from it.
During the night when he switched on his pocket-torch he saw the wire swing to and fro.
On the bread was riding a fat rat.
At last we put a stop to it.
We cannot afford to throw the bread away, because then we should have nothing left to eat in the morning, so we carefully cut off the bits of bread that the animals have gnawed.
The slices we cut off are heaped together in the middle of the floor.
Each man takes out his spade and lies down prepared to strike.
Detering, Kropp, and Kat hold their pocket-torches ready.
After a few minutes we hear the first shuffling and tugging.
It grows, now it is the sound of many little feet.
Then the torches switch on and every man strikes at the heap, which scatters with a rush.
The result is good.
We toss the bits of rat over the parapet and again lie in wait.
Several times we repeat the process.
At last the beasts get wise to it, or perhaps they have scented the blood.
They return no more.
Nevertheless, before morning the remainder of the bread on the floor has been carried off.
In the adjoining sector they attacked two large cats and a dog, bit them to death and devoured them.
Next day there was an issue of Edamer cheese.
Each man gets almost a quarter of a cheese.
In one way that is all to the good, for Edamer is tasty —but in another way it is vile, because the fat red balls have long been a sign of a bad time coming.
Our forebodings increase as rum is served out.
We drink it of course; but are not greatly comforted.
During the day we loaf about and make war on the rats.
Ammunition and hand-grenades become more plentiful.