"I am so glad Hester gave a good account of my appearance. I _am_ very fit, it is the only way to exist here. Once you begin to get 'down' and to worry, it is all up with you. You go into a rapid decline, and eventually arrive home a wreck! But as long as you smile and don't care a hang about anything, well the war seems to go on quite all right! "I enjoyed my few days' leave very much indeed. I had five days in England and three full days and four nights at home. I dropped into my old life just as if no change had occurred. And the time was not long enough to make the getting back difficult. "This life is a change for me, as you say. I haven't done laughing at its humorous side yet. In some ways we get treated like schoolboys. More so at Crosby than here, however." "_Saturday, 7 August 1915, 7.30 p.m._ "I have been having rather a bad time lately,--one of those times that reminds one that it is war and not a picnic,--but, thank goodness, it is all over now. "I think I told you that we were about to move up north of Ypres, to St. Julien or thereabouts. Well, just before we handed over these trenches to one of Kitchener's Battalions, the Germans went and knocked down a lot of our parapet, and also sent over some appalling things that we call 'sausages,' or 'aerial torpedoes,' though they are not the latter. They are great shell-shaped affairs, about 3 feet along and 9 inches in diameter, I should think. They are visible during the whole of their flight. They are thrown up about 100 yards into the air and fall down as they go up, broadside on--not point first. A few seconds after they fall there is the most appalling explosion I have ever heard. From a distance of 100 yards the rush of air is so strong that it feels as if the thing had gone off close at hand. Luckily there is a slight explosion when they are sent up, and, as I said, they are visible all the time in the air. The result is our men have time to dodge them, provided they are not mesmerised as one man was. He got stuck with his mouth open, pointing at one! A Corporal gave him a push which sent him 10 yards, and the 'sausage' landed not far from where he had been. Although they have sent more than twenty of these things over altogether, we have only had one casualty, and that a scratch. Their effect is to terrify every one and keep them on tenterhooks watching for them. Their purpose is to destroy mine galleries, I believe.... "Monday, August the 2nd, was the day we should have been relieved, and that night I went up from headquarters and relieved Roscoe, who had had a bad time in the fire trenches.... "They were firing armour-piercing shells that go right in and blow the parapet to blazes; dug-outs too, of course, if they happen to be near. After punishing the right end of the left-hand bit of trench, they traversed along, laying waste the whole of our bit.