I've come down to the lines to-day; to-morrow I go back again. I'm sitting alone in a deep chalk dug-out--it is 10 p.m. and I have lit a fire by splitting wood with a bayonet. Your letters from Montreal reached me yesterday. They came up in the water-cart when we'd all begun to despair of mail. It was wonderful the silence that followed while every one went back home for a little while, and most of them met their best girls. We've fallen into the habit of singing in parts. Jerusalem the Golden is a great favourite as we wait for our breakfast--we go through all our favourite songs, including Poor Old Adam Was My Father. Our greatest favourite is one which is symbolising the hopes that are in so many hearts on this greatest battlefield in history. We sing it under shell-fire as a kind of prayer, we sing it as we struggle knee-deep in the appalling mud, we sing it as we sit by a candle in our deep captured German dug-outs. It runs like this: "There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams: There's a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true; Till the day when I'll be going down That long, long trail with you." You ought to be able to get it, and then you will be singing it when I'm doing it. No, I don't know what to ask from you for Christmas--unless a plum pudding and a general surprise box of sweets and food stuffs. If you don't mind my suggesting it, I wouldn't a bit mind a Christmas box at once--a schoolboy's tuck box. I wear the locket, cross, and tie all the time as kind of charms against danger--they give me the feeling of loving hands going with me everywhere. God bless you. Yours ever, CON. XXII October 23, 1916 Dearest All: As you know I have been in action ever since I left England and am still. I've lived in various extemporised dwellings and am at present writing from an eight foot deep hole dug in the ground and covered over with galvanised iron and sand-bags. We have made ourselves very comfortable, and a fire is burning--I correct that--comfortable until it rains, I should say, when the water finds its own level. We have just finished with two days of penetrating rain and mist--in the trenches the mud was up to my knees, so you can imagine the joy of wading down these shell-torn tunnels. Good thick socks have been priceless. You'll be pleased to hear that two days ago I was made Right Section Commander--which is fairly rapid promotion. It means a good deal more work and responsibility, but it gives me a contact with the men which I like. I don't know when I'll get leave--not for another two months anyway. It would be ripping if I had word in time for you to run over to England for the brief nine days.