There are various stories which go to describe the work of the Fusiliers at the Aisne, and the monotony of life in the trenches is well portrayed in one letter. The writer says: "As we can't always be killing Germans we are sometimes hard put to it to kill time in the trenches. _Next to religion_, I think football is the thing that interests us most, and we are always eager to hear news of our teams at home. The papers that reach us have not got much news of that kind in, and it would be a godsend to us if only somebody would take in hand to start a paper for circulating among the troops giving nothing but the latest football news." On the more serious side is a communication from a man of the regiment who was wounded at the position of the Aisne. He stated that "the men have come through an awful time," and added that he himself was stuck in the trenches for seven days without a break, while he went for fourteen days without being able to wash his face. The German way was to attack in order to draw the British fire, and then to retire, after which would come a terrific artillery bombardment--but the British stuck to their ground always. Finally this man was hit in the head by shrapnel, while his particular chum was shot in the stomach, and they both went into a French hospital. By these simple records one may trace the regiment from the great retreat to the Aisne; and then another letter takes the story on very nearly to the great coast battle, where, by what the writer says, the second battalion of the Scots Fusiliers have been from the beginning of the German attempts on Calais. The writer, in describing how the German spies adopt the very old trick of assisting artillery fire by the use of the hands of a steeple clock, locates his story at Ypres, where some of the fiercest fighting of the whole war has taken place. "It was at the town of Ypres--a name, by the way, that gets many quaint pronunciations from our men--and the hands of the steeple clock stood at 10.40. When the men of the battalion had been in the place a quarter of an hour, such shelling began as they had never known before--and then somebody pointed out that the hands of the clock had been altered to indicate 12.40. Thereupon a search was made of the clock tower, when three Germans were found and taken prisoners, much to the disgust of the men who had seen their comrades suffering from the shell fire. They would willingly have given these spies shorter shrift than mere capture, but of course the rules of war had to be observed, even in such a clear case of espionage as this."