It’s a simply _rotten_ war! John has a working-party out of sixty “other ranks” and says they are spread in two’s and three’s over a divisional frontage. He has made two trips to locate them, and meditates a third. His language is positively hair-raising. If he falls into any more shell-holes no one will let him in the dug-out. Those confounded brigade machine gunners are firing every other second just in front of the dug-out. Heaven knows what they are firing at, or where, but how a man could be expected to sleep through the noise only a siege artillery man could tell you. George went out on a “reconnaissance” recently. George is great on doing reconnaissances and drawing maps. This time the reconnaissance did _him_, and the only map he’s yet produced is mud tracings on his person. Incidentally he says that _all_ the communication trenches are impassable, and that no one but a cat could go over the top and keep on his feet for more than thirty seconds. (N.B.--George fell into the main support line and had to be pulled out by some of John’s working-party.) George says that if the Germans come over it’s all up. Cheerful sort of beggar, George. My new smoke-helmet--the one you wear round your neck all the time, even in your dreams--is lost again. This is the third time in the course of six hours. The gas N.C.O. has calculated that with the wind at its present velocity we should be gassed in one and three-quarter seconds, not counting the recurring decimal. John has just told a story about a bayonet. It would be funny at any other time. Now, it simply sticks! The cook has just come in to say our rations have been left behind by mistake. Troubles never come singly. May heaven protect the man who is responsible if we get him! John has told another story, about an Engineer. It can’t be true, for he says this chap was out in No Man’s Land digging a trench. No one ever knew a Canadian Engineer do anything but tell the infantry how to work. It’s a rotten story, anyhow. Just look at this dug-out; a bottle of rum on the table--empty. The odd steel helmet, some dirty old newspapers, and a cup or two (empty!), and a pile of strafes from the Adjutant six inches thick. My bed has a hole in it as big as a “Johnson ’ole,” and there are rats. Also the place is inhabited by what the men call “crumbs.” Poetic version of a painful fact. John says this is the d--est outfit he has ever been in. John is right. My gumboots were worn by the Lance-Corporal in No. 2 platoon, and they are wet, beastly wet. Also my batman has forgotten to put any extra socks in my kit-bag. Also he’s lost my German rifle--the third I’ve bought for twenty francs and lost. This is a _deuce_ of a war!