I have made a great effort, as I cannot draw, to produce a Christmas card for you; it is the house (?) that the Colonel and I live in! Very old, and much knocked about by a shell in part of the roof, and bullet holes through it and both the windows, as I have endeavoured to show. In times of peace it is a very small public house, 3 rooms and a garret in which I live. The Colonel is very well, and seems to enjoy plodding knee-deep through the mud in the trenches. The Germans roused us this morning by dropping pieces of shell on our little house. We have just lunched off a most excellent turkey which you sent; it was splendid. I hope men do not get mud fever like horses; if so, we ought to do so! I trust that the war will have come to an honourable end before many months, and that we may all meet again. With very best wishes for 1915. Yours very sincerely, W. CLINTON BAKER. IN TRENCHES. _December 20th, 1914._ I heard that our people of the 2nd Battalion were driven out of the trenches by bombs from the Germans, with a loss of 8 officers and 200 men, but that may be one of the many yarns always spread about this sort of show. We have just this moment received a report that an attack is expected on us towards 4 p.m. It is now after 3 o'clock, and we have had to hurry indeed to get things ready. This morning, after our standing to arms, which always takes place at five o'clock, the Germans opened on us with heavy and moderate guns. The first shell sent the fuse through my roof, the next knocked a brick in at the side of the wall, and then I jumped out and started putting the men into covered ditches. We had between 50 and 100 shells thrown at us within three-quarters of an hour, but fortunately no one was hit. All the time, of course, rifle fire went on as usual. Such was our Advent Sunday's amusement, and the shelling continued intermittently during the whole of the morning. Our trenches are a perfect bog; I shall find some difficulty in getting round them to-night even if we are not driven out of them. As to the shelling of the East Coast, you should see what these places look like after the enemy gets through with them, for their guns (howitzers) fire nearly as large shells as warships do from their guns. The man who brought the message to me was blown off his bicycle as he came along by four shells bursting and knocking down two or three houses beside him, two miles to the rear of us. Life is too awful for description out here now, and the men feel desperate at times. Whether the Germans are equally badly off I do not know, but there is little doubt that they must be; still, they are such a disciplined nation that it is difficult to see where the first break will come, excepting that as Germany consists in reality of