nd it was at first difficult to
realise that danger to limb was past, that movement to and fro was free
from the hovering shrapnel that had so long dogged their steps and
penetrated the mind with its presence until accepted as an everyday
visitation such as the sun.

Parcels and mail arrived with a glad regularity. There is no more
pregnant a "reviver" of downheartedness than letters from the old
people, nor is anything more liable to inspire the "pip" than the
absence of such personal touches with familiar scenes. Papers can never
replace the badly penned and still more badly worded missives despatched
from some humble cottage. Those two pages of scrawled information go far
nearer to the receiver's heart than twenty columns of polished well
written print. The letter is almost a living link with all that in which
he has the strongest interest ... he is far more delighted at the news
of Tilly's overthrow of Jim for Jack than a mere possible fall of the
British Cabinet which might be pending.

"Besides," Stumpy pointed out with unconscious irony, "you opens a paper
an' you knows there ain't nothin' in it, while the ole woman might 'ave
put ten bob in yer letter."

Tommy has never sufficient a supply of cash. Everywhere a few miles
behind the Line a canteen or Y.M.C.A. had been pushed forward and in
these places the five francs a lad receives about once a fortnight does
not go very far or last long. Nor does its purchasing value cover more
than a meagre supply of such commodities as cake, chocolate, tobacco and
beer. With regard to the latter, stress must be laid on the fact that
Tommy is far less often in a state of drunkenness than the average
civilian and that he is far more prone to derive humour out of it than
to drink it.

X

DECEMBER-JANUARY, 1918

FLERS--LE PARCQ--VERCHOCQ

Snow had fallen and sprinkled the countryside with a semi-transparent
white mantle. Roads due to freezing o' nights were hard and slippery,
making the going for men labouring beneath the burden of full pack
irksome and heavy. The Normans had no eyes for the countryside (there is
no beauty in the finest masterpieces of Nature if physical conditions
are not in harmony) but had the surface before them fixedly under focus
in the interest of the neck's safety.

Eighteen or so kilos (approximately 11-1/4 miles) over the long straight
levels common to France and which, although of course the shortest route
between two points is viewe