He's a peculiar gentleman, old man Turk. One night when I was going my rounds in the trenches I noticed a general rush at a point where generally some of our liveliest boys want suppressing, so I listened, as everyone else seemed to be doing, and away from behind the Turks' trenches came a sound of a band, playing some real racy oriental music. We had quite a promenade concert. Coming from over the rugged top of a rocky hill and through the quiet starlit night it was quite weird, in a way, but we all enjoyed it. In France the Germans often have a bit of a concert before any big attack, but although we thought Johnny Turk might be going to do the same, no attack came off that night. We did have a mild attack once--see enclosed account[13]--but the enemy never got within very exciting distance of the section of the trench I was responsible for. Anyway, you can show this printed account round, and tell everyone that your son helped General Maxwell to hold the Turks back. What! What! II--WHEN THE GENERAL VISITS THE BOYS Talking about generals: we all came out of the trenches feeling very sorry for ourselves when we were relieved a week ago. Certainly we were dog-tired and inexpressibly dirty. The day following our Divisional General elected to inspect us. Thought we to ourselves: "This means that he is going to see what is left of us, just to see if we are even good enough to go as a garrison to, say, Malta." Someone even whispered "India." Certainly no one would for one moment have suggested the possibility of our being of the _least_ use as a fighting unit ever again. As a matter of fact, in numbers, health, and morale we were pretty weak. The General looked on the brighter side, however, and our dreams of Bombay were shattered pretty quickly. The General made a speech. He said that probably not since the days of the Peninsular War had troops such a hard time as we had during the past month. (We sighed solemn approval.) We had come through well. He told us that our hardships had apparently left us little the worse. (At this point a private fell forward in a faint--for which piece of acting I firmly believe he had been subsidised by his fellow-men! The body having been ostentatiously removed, the General continued.) There were other hard times ahead for us, he said (exit dream of India), but for several days yet we should continue to rest. ("Fall in, those fifty men with picks and shovels!" came the voice of a sergeant-major some distance away.) "And here y'are," concluded the General, looking round at the circle of faces ingrained with brown dust and looking swarthy in consequence, "here y'are all looking as fit as can be!" He ended by saying that when he had got our reinforcements out from home he felt sure we should be as good a fighting force as ever--which I suppose we _shall_ be. All the same, we shall have earned a rest soon, I hope.