painfully from sunburnt chins, on which talcum powder was
afterwards daubed in copious quantities till we smelt to heaven like a
Gaiety chorus!

Then breakfast! Its fragrance had been tantalising our noses during all
this gay preliminary, for dirty as we may get--and yet sit down to eat
in the trenches--it was an unwritten law that no man who was not shaved,
shorn, and washed after the manner of the Romans should sit down to mess
when in reserve. Lyte one day in a burst of enthusiasm, while treasurer
of the mess, decreed that the servants should also wash before starting
to cook, but after one trial, dinner being thereby delayed a couple of
hours, the mess rebelled and the cooks were allowed to revert to their
former state of barbarism.

Breakfast over, there came the censoring of mail, so that it could be
sent to battalion headquarters before 2 o'clock. This is supposed by
some to furnish an endless amount of amusement to the officers, and
often facetious remarks are introduced by the writer to this end, but to
most of us censoring is a beastly bore, and one views with dismay the
enormous pile of letters that your platoon sergeant dumps down on your
bed each day at noon with the laconic announcement of "Mail, sir!"

One runs across people of many sorts while reading through this heap.
The first and commonest is the married man who sticks strictly to
private affairs and perhaps says to to his wife: "You remember Jimmy
D----who used to work at So-and-so's. He was killed by a shell, but you
can tell his wife he didn't suffer none, as he died quick." Not a word
you will notice of his own escape or of anything that would tend to
aggravate the sorrow of the stricken family. Of the same affair he would
probably write to a chum: "You know poor old Jimmy D----. He was all
blew to hell by a whizz-bang. A chunk of it just missed my napper by an
inch. I come near going West that time, believe me!"

Then there is another type whose endless exaggerations make one wish to
scribble the word "liar" at the end of each paragraph, but which you
pass, after scratching out the numbers of our slain and some of the
grosser statements.

Once in a while you may come across a guileless sort of man who, after
extolling the virtues of his platoon commander, proceeds to tell his
friend Bob: "No, I haven't been made a corporal yet, but our section has
none now and I am the oldest soldier left." One feels great curiosity as
to the state of this