To anyone who has served any time at the front the above word will bring back recollections of various kinds, for dugouts are of varying types. The term is employed to denote any shelter in the neighborhood of the firing line, from the funk hole which is only a recess cut into the side of a trench with little or no shelter above it and none at the entrance, to the cavity dug down into the ground a distance varying from ten feet to seventy, and strengthened by supports of wood, steel, or concrete. It is also loosely used to denote cellars, caves, and shellholes which may be employed as means of protection from rifle bullet, shrapnel, or high explosive shell.

It is probably true in dugouts, as in many of the other necessities of war, that we learned much from the German, for he was probably the first to recognize the protection rendered by a well-built—or, rather, well-dug—re?nforced hole in the ground. At various times when we have taken portions of the German lines we have found well-made homes underground, with two or more long entrances, one at either end, so that if one is hit by a shell, the other affords a means of exit to the inhabitants.

Those we took at Vimy seemed almost free of rats, which statement could not truthfully be made of our own dugouts. I don\'t know whether the German has some method of getting rid of rats, but I do know from practical and irritating experience that the German either has no method of freeing his dugouts of lice, or else thoroughly enjoys the company of vermin. None of us who occupied his underground dwellings, even if only for a few days, came back free from these annoying and disgusting companions. So tenacious and clinging were they that it took repeated baths and changes to free us of them. One might conclude that they had been treated in a brotherly way by the Hun.

Of course, as Kelly said, scratching is common in the best circles out there. The man who has to reach over his shoulder in an attempt to remove an irritation from that almost unattainable spot between the shoulder blades is not shunned or looked at askance, but serves only as a source of amusement to his companions. Underwear searching is a common, very common, form of pastime. Though you may have been a very dignified and sensitive soul, your sensitiveness gradually dulls until you care not a "hoot" who may see you sitting in a brilliant sunshine anxiously scanning your clothes; or rising at midnight from a much-troubled sleep and by dim candle light beginning the often well-rewarded inspection.

So far as the ordinary Tommy is concerned, he ignores not only his acquaintances but the world in general. There he sits in his bare pelt and performs a massacre which in numbers dwarfs almost to infinity the killings of the Armenians by the Turks. In the town of Vimy I one time passed a jocular, though profitable, hour at this occupation while I sat on the floor of the cellar of an old brewery with a Scotch padre on one side of me, and a Nova Scotia major on the other, all absorbed in the same intense search, while above our heads the shells every little while hit the fallen walls of our shelter. And through the thin-walled partition that separated us from our soldier-servants we heard propounded a most momentous question which showed us that they too were employing their time to advantage. The question was:—

"Say, Kelly, what the h—— will all the lice do for a living after the war?" And for once Kelly was floored.

Often dugouts are but shelters dug into the wall of a trench, a thin sheet-iron roof put on top, and two or three layers of sandbags on top of that. This gives protection against bullets, shrapnel, or bits of shell, but a straight hit from a medium-sized shell would go right through. And yet it is strange how seldom these are hit direct, considering their large numbers. This may in part account for one\'s feeling of relative security while in them, but this feeling is no doubt also partly due to our resemblance to the ostrich which hides its head to avoid danger. Be this as it may, many a good night\'s sleep have I passed in shelters such as this, with shells bursting within one hundred yards at frequent intervals during the night. During the month previous to the Battle of Arras my orderlies and I lived in an abode of this nature most of the time, only 500 yards from our front line trenches. Shells continually fell well within the hundred yard radius of it—as a matter of fact, shortly afterwards this dugout was completely blown in—yet no one worried in the least about it. This is not told as a strange experience, for all officers who have served at the front have often lived in the same surroundings. This experience is related only to illustrate one type of protective shelter.

Deep dugouts vary in depth anywhere from ten to forty or fifty feet in cases where the soldier has had to do all the digging, but in some cases where limestone quarrying has been extensively carried on there have often been found, ready to hand, caves, sixty to one hundred feet in depth, such as the famous Zivy cave, opposite Mt. St. Eloy. There are many of them about this region, some of which, as the one mentioned, are large enough to give shelter to 1000 men. Usually there is a circular airshaft in the center. This shaft in Zivy cave was the target for months for German gunners, as they had occupied this region, and knew it well. In fact the story is told that in this cave, or one of the others near about, 800 Germans were gassed and killed by the French when they retook this ground. How much truth is in the story it is difficult to say. But at any rate, all through the hard, cold winter of 1916-17 the Canadians who were holding this front found good protection and some warmth in this cave for many of their men, though at all times the air in it had a grayish tinge, as the ventilation was hardly up-to-date.

On one occasion at 11 p.m. Colonel J—— and the writer found Zivy cave as welcome a sight as ever struck the eye of man. Coming into the trenches, we stumbled into a heavy Hun artillery barrage. After a number of close shaves, in two of which we were buried in mud from the exploding shell, we were heavily dragging our feet through the thick mud of Guillermot trench when a shell struck full in the trench twenty feet in front of us, nearly bursting our ear drums. We pressed closely against the wall of the trench, awaiting the next. It came almost i............