Two private plum puddings arrived last night; many thanks. I turned in at 8.30 p.m., and slept peacefully and heavily till 7.30 a.m., and would have slept longer, only an orderly from the Brigade Office woke me with his gentle tread on carpetless boards! I had one other interval during the night listening to our guns all blazing away together for quite a long time. Presumably they are trying to catch the Germans forming up somewhere for an attack. You ought to be near a six-inch shell when it bursts to hear the sort of "scruntling" wrench that it gives as it breaks up the tough outer steel. To-day I have been arranging to have my men and their clothes washed, for such things have to go on in war as well as in peace time, only I am obliged to have the clothes fumigated as well now. My own hair has not been cut since I left Winchester, but I will try to see to that this afternoon! The weather has broken from frost into a heavy drizzle, which ought to make the trenches a sight, with the mud that is in them already, when we go back. I have written to my Mother thanking her for her generous gift to the Regiment. I fear she is alarmed at my being out here.... I am going for a walk this afternoon to try to get some life into my toes; they have been quite dead since we went into the trenches for the first time. Probably they are really all right, though I cannot feel anything as yet in them. Gen. Davis tells me that we are shooting away at the enemy to-day, but still they will not fight. Our last hostess was the daughter of a gamekeeper; that was where we had some milk yesterday morning. She said that her father escaped the Germans by jumping on a horse and riding 20 miles. I think I could have walked that distance easily for the same reason. Col. Napier told me that his boy Charlie was captured by the Germans at school at Hanover, "which," he added, "doesn't make me love my enemies any more."... IN BILLETS. _December 29th, 1914._