When Fritz has got through the last verse of his Hymn he is almost invariably quiet and harmless as a sucking dove for an hour or two. I take it he makes a serious business of his breakfast. And there again he often pays. Our snipers have their brekker later, and devote half an hour now to observation of the neighbourhood of all the little spirals of smoke in the Boche lines which indicate breakfast fires. They generally have some luck then; and sometimes it becomes worth while to turn on a machine-gun or two, where Fritz's appetite has made him careless. It is now broad daylight, and our ration parties appear, four to each platoon, trailing up the trenches from the rear with the breakfast tea and bacon. Each party dumps its dixey of tea down in the centre of the sector of its platoon, and the Platoon Sergeant dishes out to the section commanders the whack of bacon for their sections, while all hands draw their mugs of tea. The bread and jam and "dry rations" were drawn overnight. And so to breakfast, in the dug-outs or along the fire-step, according to the state of the weather. It's breakfast for all hands, except the sentries, and they are relieved to get theirs directly the men to relieve them have eaten. With the exception of those who are on duty, the officers get along to the Company dug-out for their breakfast, which the batmen have been preparing. They cook it, you know, over a brazier--some old pail or tin with holes punched in it, consuming coke and charcoal mixed, or whatever fuel one has. Fried bacon, tea, and bread-and-jam; that's our usual menu. Sometimes there may be a tin of fruit as well, or some luxury of that sort from home. Always there are good appetites and no need of sauce. But, look here, I've just got to stop now. And yet I've only reached breakfast in my jotting of the day's routine in trenches. Isn't it maddening? Well, I'll get another chance to-night or to-morrow, and give you some more of it. I really will finish it, and I'm sorry I couldn't have done it in one letter, as it would have been done by a more competent jotter-down of things than your "_Temporary Gentleman_." TOMMY DODD AND TRENCH ROUTINE You'll be grieved to hear that cheery, indomitable little Tommy Dodd was rather badly laid out this morning; four or five nasty wounds from shrapnel. But I think he'll pull through. He has so much of the will to live, and I am sure a soul so uniformly cheerful as his must make its body easier to heal.