The next night I had a shack made for me by the side of the road, and my orderly had just placed my haversack in it and I had walked out ten paces from it, grumbling because I had got to wait while he fetched my blankets; when a big shell went smack through the roof of it and blew it to bits. It was a mercy my orderly was late in getting my bed ready, or I should have been caught in it.

The morning after that I was on duty in charge of the guns when a Boche aeroplane shot down from behind a cloud and let fly at us with his machine gun. The bullets splashed into the ground within a yard of me, but I was not hit. Our guns opened on the Boche and brought him down just as he got over his own lines.

It was said that the pilot was a woman, the sweetheart of Prince Eitel Something or Other, the German air man who had been killed, but I doubt if the story was true. Anyway it was a daring thing and deserved and I am cross.

The same night I was walking along the road toward my battery, with another officer, when suddenly shells began to drop all around us.

We were driven off the road, lost our way in the darkness, wandered up into no man's land, and got fixed in some barbed wire while a German sniper had a merry ten minutes trying to snipe us.

When we eventually got back to the battery we found we have been reported “missing, believed killed.”

After that the other officers in my battery vowed that I might have been born to be hanged instead of shot. I suppose Ethel told you about my attack of trench fever. I caught that doing observation duty on a soaking wet day in a filthy German sniper’s post we had captured, but I am quite fit again now,. Trench fever is like a mixture of influenza and typhoid, and leaves you with pains in the leg like severe neuralgia. I have not seen either Alf or Fred, so I rather think I shall have a chance to be near them soon. They have both had a pretty hot time. Fred is a Corporal in the machine gunners now, and Alf is a bombardier in a howitzer battery.

You can guess I look forward to seeing one or both of them.

Phil, who was seventeen last month, is going to enlist at once in an O. T. C. In the hope of getting a commission in the artillery.

The young beggar tried to get into the Royal Flying Corps a week or two ago, but I wrote and persuaded him not to.

He can't be sent to France until he is 18, and I sincerely hope the War will be over by then. I've seen enough of it to dread the thought of the boy coming out, but I would rather see him anxious to do his bit than shirk it.

As a matter fact, I really think peace is not so far off, though it is impossible to say. Fritz has had a most awful battering lately and I don't think he can stand much more.

He is a lot more fed up with it than the outside world is allowed to know.

When some of our big attacks take place he must feel as though hell is opening on him. All men are fed up, but not in the same way.

Much as we all want to get home to our wives and families I never hear a man say he wants the War to finish before the boss is thoroughly beaten and broken.

There is precious little glory or shouting “Hooray" about this war, but it is fine to see our men face fire.

They don't like it, but they always go about their job so quietly and steadily.

I have watched the men in my battery, some very white and others flushed, but they always carry on regardless of what may happen.

And when they are wounded there is something pitiful about the quiet way they take it.

They are the kind of men who are bound to win if they are given time.

Now I must stop and hope that all this talk about soldering has not boring.

I wish that after the War we could all meet. Both Ethel and I would give a lot to see you and your little ones, and make your husband’s acquaintance in the flesh as well as by photo. Love to you and yours, Frank.

The smudges and smears on this letter are due to rusty water dripping off the iron roof of my hut.