in the upper left-hand drawer in my dressing-room. You will find some stand-up single collars there with five buttonholes in them. Please roll one up flat, and send it across in a letter or with soap parcel. They go in collar of uniform jacket, and as this sort of collar has gone out, I am wearing mine and throwing them away when done. IN BILLETS. _January 26th, 1915._ I am very sorry that you have been obliged to send for the doctor. "Flu" makes one feel a worm, so take care of yourself. I do not fancy you need fear the air raids; keep to the country, it is safer than town. They have not enough explosives on their cars to do all the damage they would like in London, let alone the remainder of England. The trip to Norfolk was only a trial one, I think. It has turned very cold here now, and we cannot get a fire in this place. You see, the inhabitants are coming back, and we do not like to steal their wood, for it would cause unpleasantness, whilst we have great difficulty in getting any coal, so we are between the devil and the deep sea! The Germans managed to kill one man yesterday with their shelling. I mean one civilian, of course; soldiers do not count. I suppose we are fair targets. I have been very lucky, though, with my Batt., on the whole, for I have only had a quarter of the casualties of my neighbour the two last times, or even less. Of course, it is just luck, but I take every precaution, as you know, and use my guns on their machine guns in, I hope, a judicious manner, giving the gunners little maps of where we have spotted them along all our long front; and so we crush the scamps. They are a venomous crew. They marked a bridge that we cross over a ditch, consisting of two planks and a hand-rail, and they turned their Maxims on to that. A couple of men were there, and they lay down on the bridge whilst the Maxim fired over their heads, cut the hand-rail clean away, and just missed them. We got off quite well from the trenches last night, as the enemy had had a great doing down with us that afternoon. The threatened attack on our right either never came off or was also beaten off; let us hope the latter. So dear old Admiral Dennistoun has gone. At 78 one must expect to go to Heaven shortly, but still one's friends will be sorry, no doubt, and Hal loses his godfather. I did not know him very well myself, but I am sorry because you were fond of him. I wonder if it is about to settle in for cold weather in these parts. If so, we shall have attacks across the frozen ground. Whilst it was wet the Germans could not very well get at us without giving plenty of notice, but now they will be able to work their way quietly across the hard earth. However, it cuts in another way, for they are not too well clothed and they will feel this severe weather terribly. It is horrible always to have to hope that many Germans will be killed.