Just as he was going into battle a man of the Staffordshire Regiment received a letter announcing the sudden death of his wife and baby daughter. There was no time for tears or vain regrets, and he had to go into the fight with his heart stricken with that terrible grief. In the fighting he acquitted himself like a hero, and just as we were retiring he received a mortal wound. I offered a word of sympathy, but he would not hear of it. “Never mind,” he said, “I’m booked through; but I have sent a few Germans before; and, anyhow, I am going to see the ones I love”: _A Sergeant of the 9th Lancers_. Vultures We came on a German who had been pinned down under a gun-carriage that had to be abandoned. He could not extricate himself, and he simply had to lie there with two loathsome vultures waiting to nibble at him when the last spark of life had gone. He was relieved when we found him, for you can imagine it’s not nice to see these awful creatures waiting to make a meal of you. Whenever we see them we kill them, but they are always hovering about the battlefields, and they always follow our men on the march. Some instinct seems to tell them when to expect dead men. They are terribly afraid of the aeroplanes, and when the machines are up vultures clear out of the way: _Pte. T. R. Morgan, Royal Field Artillery_. A Song of Death I am a bit down in the mouth over a thing that happened last night. We had a bit of a sing-song and smoker to mark the arrival in camp of a couple of boxes of cigarettes. My best chum, the one I have told you about so often, was called on for a song, and, just as he took his fag out of his mouth to oblige, a shell dropped into us, and he was badly wounded on the side and in the head. “I’m done for, George,” was all he had time to say, and off he went. He was a fine chum. No man ever had better, and we were all cut up about it. He had a wife and four children at home. God only knows what will become of them now: _A Sergeant of the 1st Division Staff_. No More Cold Trenches There was a chap of the Berkshires who, like many more of us, had ’listed after a row with his girl. At the crossing of the Aisne he got hit, and he had just breath enough to tell me the name of the girl, and ask me to write to her. “Tell her,” he said, “I’m sorry we had that row, but it was for the best, for if we hadn’t had it I should not have been able to do my bit for my country. It seems awfully hard that I can never see her again to explain things to her, but I’m sure she will think better of me now than if I had been one of the stay-at-homes. Good-bye, old chap; there’ll be no more cold nights in the trenches for me, anyhow”: _A Private of the Leicestershire Regiment_. A Lady’s Handkerchief