Letters From the Front

Dated: March 20, 1915

Just a few lines to inform you that Penny and I are still in the big game. As you have no doubt been informed, we have been in the trenches for over a month. We have four day spells and then we move back a mile or two and rest up for four days. All our movements are made at night of course. Some nights it is quite exciting, bullets flying around in all directions. We have to do all the fatigue work during the night—packing rations and firewood, barbed wire, etc., into the trenches.

We have little dug-outs where we have to snatch forty winks when we get a chance, when off duty. The last trip in I hadn't a dug-out so I had to content myself with dozing over a fire. Some days the fire is heavy and continuous through the night as well as the day. In fact most of the shooting is done in the early morning. We were under heavy shell fire last trip. Some of them landed a little too close to be pleasant, but they didn't just hit the range, so our casualties were light. The German trenches are only four hundred yards from us at this point. The most exciting duties at present are when we go out in front of the trenches on listening patrols, endeavouring to find out what work is going on around the enemy's trenches; also improving our own wire entanglements and patching them up after being cut by the enemy. Of course we do this work at night on our hands and knees. The worst feature of this is when the star shells go up. There is a possibility of our being seen, in which case it's pretty warm work.