most gorgeous view of
a modern attack. That was some time ago, so you needn't be nervous.

Have I mentioned rum to you? I never tasted it to my knowledge until I
came out here. We get it served us whenever we're wet. It's the one
thing which keeps a man alive in the winter--you can sleep when you're
drenched through and never get a cold if you take it.

At night, by a fire, eight feet underground, we sing all the dear old
songs. We manage a kind of glee--Clementina, The Long, Long Trail, Three
Blind Mice, Long, Long Ago, Rock of Ages. Hymns are quite favourites.

Don't worry about me; your prayers weave round me a mantle of defence.

Yours with more love than I can write,

CON.

XXIV

October 31st, 1916.
Hallowe'en.

Dearest People:

Once more I'm taking the night-firing and so have a chance to write to
you. I got letters from you all, and they each deserve answers, but I
have so little time to write. We've been having beastly weather--drowned
out of our little houses below ground, with rivers running through our
beds. The mud is once more up to our knees and gets into whatever we
eat. The wonder is that we keep healthy--I suppose it's the open air. My
throat never troubles me and I'm free from colds in spite of wet feet.
The main disadvantage is that we rarely get a chance to wash or change
our clothes. Your ideas of an army with its buttons all shining is quite
erroneous; we look like drunk and disorderlies who have spent the night
in the gutter--and we have the same instinct for fighting.

In the trenches the other day I heard mother's Suffolk tongue and had a
jolly talk with a chap who shared many of my memories. It was his first
trip in and the Huns were shelling badly, but he didn't seem at all
upset.

We're still hard at it and have given up all idea of a rest--the only
way we'll get one is with a blighty. You say how often you tell
yourselves that the same moon looks down on me; it does, but on a scene
how different! We advance over old battlefields--everything is blasted.
If you start digging, you turn up what's left of something human. If
there were any grounds for superstition, surely the places in which I
have been should be ghost-haunted. One never thinks about it. For myself
I have increasingly the feeling that I am protected by your prayers; I
tell myself so when I am in danger.

Here I sit in an old sweater and muddy breeches, the very re