These huts, and all covered trenches, are only safe from shrapnel exploding in the air or near by.  No ordinary trench is safe from a shell falling upon it; but this, as a matter of fact, has scarcely ever happened.  For shells are as a rule fired from some considerable distance, and in most cases the opposing lines of trenches are so close together that there would be great danger of sending a shell into the back of your own trench, the most deadly disaster that can happen.  The trenches are often so close together that their occupants can talk to one another, and a considerable amount of camaraderie may spring up.

I know of one instance where a private arrangement was made that they would not shoot on either side.  One day a man on our side was wounded, and there was great annoyance till a note was thrown across apologizing profusely, and explaining that it was done by a man in a trench behind who did not know of the compact!  A few days later a message came to say that an important officer was coming to inspect the German trench, and that they would be obliged to fire, but that they would give due warning by three shots fired in quick succession.  The shots were fired, and our men lay low, under a storm of bullets, till firing ceased, and another message arrived to say that the danger was past.  We really are queer animals!

Behind the trenches at Pervyse the fields were positively riddled with shot-holes.  In one space, not more than twenty yards square, we counted the marks of over a hundred shells.  The railway station was like a sieve, and most of the houses in the little town were absolutely destroyed.  I do not believe that there was a house in the place which had not been hit, and the number of shells that must have rained on that small area would have sufficed not so many years ago for the siege of a large town.  The church was destroyed beyond any possibility of repair.  The roof was gone entirely, and large portions of the walls; a great piece of the tower had been blown clean out, and the tower itself was leaning dangerously.  The bombardment of the church must have been terrific, for even the heavy pillars of the aisle had been snapped across.  Of the altar only the solid stones remained, surrounded by fragments of what had once been the stained glass of the apse, and the twisted remains of the great brass candlesticks which had stood beside the altar.  Only a few weeks ago this was an old parish church of singular beauty.  Now even the graves in the churchyard have been torn open by the shells.  These few battered walls, these heaps of stone and brick, are all that remain of a prosperous village and its ancient church.