A friend in the 1st Army, which was covering the part of the line thus attacked, showed me the 1st Army summary of 7 p.m., January 1st, which added the following to the news on the situation: "All is quiet in front. Fighting on right of 1st Corps last night was not as serious as at first reported. Casualties in Scots Guards believed to be about five officers and fifty other ranks. Most of these casualties occurred owing to the regiment pushing on beyond the original trench, and attacking the enemy's position. This wet weather is entailing great hardship on the men, who are fully engaged repairing trenches, some of which have had to be abandoned owing to water. The Germans are reported to be no better off." Such brief, dry, official summaries applied to most of the wet days of January, 1915. Trench warfare in winter has a very stoggy sameness about it. A 3rd Corps advance in front of the Ploegsteert Wood resulted in several of our men being drowned while attacking, so deep was the water in the submerged shell-holes in the flooded area. Discipline, the capacity to go forward in pursuance of an order, in spite of the fact that doing so seems utterly futile, is possessed by the British troops to a remarkable degree. Small operations, comparatively unimportant in scope and result, served to demonstrate daily the splendid spirit of the men under inconceivably trying conditions. One trench at Givenchy was taken and retaken time after time, and the men ordered to capture the trench were ever found ready to "go up" in the same dashing way, though they knew to a man that the assault meant inevitable loss, and would more than likely be followed by a further enforced evacuation, by their own comrades, of the untenable position. The Huns were well supplied with trench-mortars, bombs and hand-grenades, and used them with great effect. Our men had practically none of these indispensable attributes to trench warfare, or at least had so few of them that their use produced comparatively negligible results. The Christmas truce between British and German units confronting each other in the trenches produced echoes for weeks. The order from General French stating clearly that "the Commander-in-Chief views with the greatest displeasure" such fraternizing with the enemy had produced a partial effect, but instances still occurred where the Huns took the initiative in the matter of peace overtures for short periods. A visit to one part of our front line unearthed the following story: The opposing trenches were separated by a highway, across which, one morning, a German soldier shouted, "Let's have a truce for to-day. We don't want to kill you fellows. Why should we kill each other? We are to be relieved by the Prussians to-morrow night. You can kill them if you like. We don't care. We are Saxons."