Enormous rats infest the country near the trenches, & at night come into the dugouts after food. Germans were firing very little quite different to what it was when we were here last May, when it was sometimes a little difficult to dodge bullets at night. 9 December 1915 Still very mild and wet – walked over a good bit of country a little in rear of from trenches, looking for good machine gun placements to stop an advance if ever the Germans broke through the line 10 December 1915 One of our own shells missed me by about a yard yesterday as I was standing about 1000 yards from the German trenches – bad laying or careless setting. Rains hard day and night