Jock would not believe that I did not know how I came by the thing, and you may find it difficult, too, to accept my statement, but it is a fact. I do not know how I got it. The period of the charge is a slice of my life which is completely gone from my memory. I do not know what sights I saw nor what sounds I heard. On our first Sunday in this position, the German artillery became quiet about ten o'clock, and, about half an hour later, we heard strains of music from beyond the slightly risen ground on Fritz's lines. They were holding a Sunday service. But as soon as it was over, we were greeted with a couple of hundred shells from their artillery, so we came to the conclusion that the sermon must have been rotten. The weather conditions here were so bad that a number of our fellows were sent to the base hospital with frost-bite, or what is known now as "trench feet." They suffered excruciating pain. I saw one fellow who had to have his shoe cut off; the foot swelled up instantly to very great size and was almost entirely black. As a supposed protection against the conditions which had caused so many cases of "trench feet" some bureau expert over in England had a supply of rubber boots forwarded to us. I have seen many things which were useless supplied to soldiers but never anything to equal these boots. They were so loose and clumsy that they materially interfered with the action of walking and they were just of a height to be entirely submerged in the trench mud, leaving the wearer with an individual and separate bucketful of the stuff to lift with each foot. I heard many a pair wished on the Kaiser's feet. Big ladles with long handles also were distributed among us to be used in scraping out the water from the trenches, and each of us took our turn in acting as "chef," that is, ladling the water out behind the trench wall. Occasionally where a fellow, slow in throwing it over, would hold the ladle up a few seconds too long--ping!--a bullet would go through it. If we wanted to sit down the only thing we could do was to place our packs and equipment on the fire-step and sit on them. Our position was somewhat lower than that of the Germans, as they occupied a sort of ridge. For days and nights at a time we did nothing but wait, with an occasional raiding party or artillery encounter, with now and again a heavy bombardment, to break the tedium.