only of iron, and not steel. The piece I
have in front of me weighs about a pound, with dreadful jagged edges.
So soon as this shelling stops I must sneak off to try and put our
cemeteries straight. I am having some very nice wooden crosses made
for my poor men. Do tell me how Mr. Denison is? He might be interested
in some of this news, as he was a gunner, and it is all about shells,
if ever I get home to tell him! In the middle of this shelling both
sides firing hard at each other, one of my buglers has arrived with a
carrier pigeon which was knocked down by a stone. The French officer
attached to our division told me that the Germans had spent large sums
of money and established many spies as farmers here. They intended
coming in this way to France, you see. Then they had telephone wires
laid down towards Germany from various places, and I am inclined to
think some have been found. Now our numerous trenches having cut these
wires, they have to depend on something else, and I believe that
something to be carrier pigeons. The way they shell the ground we
occupy makes me think they really know where we are, and our own
military authorities do not like to take drastic action against a
person who poses as a French farmer or his wife looking for their lost
property, when of course all the time they are possibly farmers who
have been in German pay, and are probably sending information across
by carrier pigeon daily. I hope that Wilkinson in Newark is making a
good thing of the steel armour. It is rather a fine trophy to have, I
think....

_P.S._--I discovered our gunners shelling a beautiful French cemetery
the other day, because the Germans had found that we respected
churches, etc., and they therefore opened the vaults and lived in them
in the cemetery!

IN TRENCHES.
_January 30th, 1915._

Two letters from you last night, taking me up to January 27th. So glad
to hear that you are really better. I do not know what would happen to
us if we got "Flu." I suppose we should go on exactly the same. One of
the enemy's six-inch shells has just burst beside us, so I must keep
my eyes open! I started work soon after five o'clock this morning
getting road dykes cleared, as by this means I think I can drain my
own trenches better. The water has been running away merrily ever
since. Major B----, who came back about one o'clock this morning,