As well as trenches the shells from the guns and bombs made big craters in the ground. The rain filled up the craters and then poured into the trenches. The trenches were wet and cold and at this time some of them did not have duckboards or dug-outs. The battalion lived in mud and water. In some places trenches are waist deep in water.
Time is spent digging, filling sandbags, building up parapets, fetching stores, etc.
One does not have time to be weary. Private Pollard wrote about trench life in his memoirs published in 1932 . The trench, when we reached it, was half full of mud and water. We set to work to try and drain it. Our efforts were hampered by the fact that the French, who had first occupied it, had buried their dead in the bottom and sides.