25th April (1918)

Spent most of the morning burying my mule.  Salved a lot of material with which we are making the bivvy quite palatial. The episode of the Maori Officer – We saw him posed in Napoleonic attitude, sternly contemplating a tangled heap of wire.  He managed to maintain this attitude, regardant, until about half our cavalcade had passed, then gave in, pulled off his tin lid and staggered away, a very inebriated and muddy-backed Maori Officer. The N.C.O. who caught me when I capsized that wagon some months back was killed last night, poor chap, and buried this morning.  Even in ugly things like making a noise man cannot compete with nature, the loudest battery is not so appalling as a peal of thunder.