"All day yesterday I was on fatigue work, and did not finish until 7.30 to 8. We started the morning by building a hedge with bushes gathered from the Heath, and then we unloaded trucks of hay and straw and built them in a stack. I got several stray pieces down my neck. After that we had to unload a traction load of coal in one-cwt. sacks, and oh, they were dirty and awkward too. We had sacks over our heads like ordinary coalmen, and you ought to have seen our hands and faces when we had finished. We could not get any tea, as we were expecting three more trolleys. After about two hours the trolleys came, and we unloaded some meat; it took three of us to lift some of the pieces. Then after that bacon, oats, tea, jam, and about 1,000 loaves of bread. We were proper Jacks-of-all-trades and were thoroughly tired out. "This seems a funny sort of Christmas Day, but it will be all right after five o'clock. Of course I'd rather be in London and see you all. Still, all the same I'm rather enjoying myself this afternoon. I have a big box of chocs. by the side of me, and they are gradually diminishing. And now I feel in a better mood." The Y.M., as it is now always called by the men at and from the front, played a very important part, an invaluable part, in Sydney Baxter's camp life. He writes: "We were about twenty minutes' walk from the village, and at first there was absolutely nothing there to go down for, and we seemed doomed to a very uncomfortable winter. However, the words of a well-known war song, 'Every cloud is silver lined,' are very true. _Our_ cloud was soon brightly lined by the Y.M. people, who discovered the best way to do it in no time. A hall was acquired in the village for the sale of tea and eatables, and for facilitating writing and reading for the troops in camp. It was staffed by ladies in the locality and was a real Godsend to us all. Picture us from 6.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on and off parade, in a muddy camp, without even a semblance of a canteen or writing-hut, always within sound of the bugle with its ever-recurring call for Orderly Sergeants, tired out and wet through and inwardly chafing at the unaccustomed discipline. Our spirits were on a par with Bairnsfather's 'Fed-up one.' At the last note of 'the Retreat' we were free. Without the Y.M. touch we should have had to stay in our bleak huts, constantly reminded of our surroundings and discomforts. But these Y.M. people had provided a comfortable, well-lighted, and, above all, warm room, with plenty of books and papers and any amount of grub and unlimited tea to wash it down. Isn't it wonderful how many sorrows the British army can drown in a cup of tea?