Nothing of any importance happened in the next few weeks, things were pretty quiet on the line; of course it was raining most of the time and we were up to our knees in mud and water. We were four months without seeing the sun, and we were beginning to think that Fritzie had gotten his range and blown him out. Then too we were crawling with vermin, and even when we got a clean outfit of clothes in a few hours they would be just as bad as ever. Being wet all the time, and having to put up with the discomfort of vermin and rats, were harder on us than the dangers of actual fighting. The part of the line where we were had superior artillery positions and observation posts, and any time Fritzie opened up, our artillery soon silenced him. It used to be a case of "You let me alone, and I'll let you alone." The trenches were in awful shape in spite of the continuous working parties, each rain made them a little worse. We used to get our rum every morning, and I want to say a word to those at home who say it should be stopped. I would like to make them lie out in a wet mudhole all night, come in blue and cold and hardly able to stand, not knowing whether they had feet or lumps of ice attached to their legs, and see whether or not they would want something to warm them up--I think we would all have been dead if it hadn't been for the rum that winter. You see, you are "all in" after a night in the open, and all you want to do is to sleep, so you crawl into the nearest dugout and lie down; now, the rum just keeps the blood circulating and the body warm while you are sleeping, so that when you waken you have not caught the chill that otherwise you would have done, for those dugouts of ours were anything but cozy and comfortable. They were really only little huts in the trench, each one large enough for two or three men. They were built up with sandbags and had a piece of corrugated iron over the top; for the floor there was usually two or three inches of wet mud. I assure you it was cold comfort, and we were not allowed to lie in peace even here--a rat would run over your face, or crawl over your body to see if there was anything eatable in your pockets. Every bit of eats about us had to be securely fastened up in our mess tins to save it from these pests. I remember one morning I came in from sentry duty, and after having breakfast I lay down in a dugout; we were given enough bread ration in the morning to last us all day, and what was over from my breakfast I put in my mess tin, but I had lost the cover of my tin, so I hung it up thinking it would be safe from the rats. Uncle Sam was sleeping when I came in, and I lay down beside him. I was enjoying a cigarette when all at once I saw a rat heading for my tin; I didn't want to get up to chase him away, so I reached over and brought up my rifle--there was scarcely room to use it in the dugout, but just as the rat reached my tin I fired. Uncle Sam leaped to his feet, scared half out of his