r Binkie went, I didn't care a
hang what happened. We put in another twenty-four hours in the
trenches and then we started on our long march up north. We reached
our destination and went into the trenches at S----. We relieved the
English troops, and were there right up till Christmas. It was very
quiet except for a few big raids that we pulled off; but the mud was
awful. We waded through mud and water up past our waists going into
the front lines, and once there we had to keep pumping all the time.
Each day we would have a trench mortar scrap from two o'clock till
five, and we would blow each other's trenches to pieces. I was in the
trenches on Christmas day and I had two bottles of champagne that we
had managed to smuggle in. I was in charge of the Stokes gun crew at
that time, and I sent Tommy down to Headquarters for orders. As he
left I said, "Now, Tommy, if you bring me my leave check, I'll give you
five francs." After awhile Tommy came back and said, "Bob, hand out
those five francs, here's your leave check." I threw him the money,
and away I beat it along the trench as fast as my feet could carry me.
It would have taken a "whiz-bang" to catch up to me that day. It was
Xmas afternoon when I left the trenches, and the next day at 5 o'clock,
still muddy and carrying my pack and rifle, I stumbled off the train at
Victoria Station, and in twenty minutes I was at home, telling my old
dad the tale that I have told you.

Of those ten short wild days in London I won't speak, but it was like
getting to heaven after being in hell. They slipped by much too
quickly, and then the time came for me to go back. So one morning I
landed up at Victoria Station and caught what is known as "the train of
tears." The boys are always very silent going back--there is never any
cheering. After you have had eighteen months of hell, war is not the
grand romantic thing it seemed at first. The boys feel as if they were
on their way to a funeral, and the worst of it is, it may be their own.
But once in France, every one seems to brighten up again, and the game
goes on as before. Memories of home die away, and you become simply an
atom in the big war machine. It took me some time to get settled down
again, and they kept moving us in and out of the trenches. It was
terribly wet and cold, and we would sit for days all huddled around our
old charcoal brazier in a dugout forty feet under ground. Of course a
dugout at this depth