reconnoitre and was probably shot, they said--they never saw him again.
So the Sergt. of the W.R. (aged 22!) took command and led them for
safety, still under fire, to a ditch with one foot of water in it. This
was on the _Monday night before Xmas_. They stayed in it all Tuesday and
Tuesday night, when it was snowing. Before daylight he "skirmished" them
to a trench he knew of two hundred yards in advance, where he had seen
one of his regiment the day before. This was in water above their knees.
He showed me the mud-line on his trousers.

This turned out to be one of the German communication trenches. They
stayed in that all Wednesday, Wednesday night, and Thursday, living on
some biscuit one man had, some bits of chocolate, and drinking the dirty
trench water, in which was a dead German dressed as a Gurkha. "We was
prayin' all the time," said one of them. Then one ventured out to get
water and was shot. On Xmas Eve night it froze hard, and they were so
weak and starved and numb that the Sergt. decided that they couldn't
stick it any longer, so they cast their equipment and made a dash for a
camp fire they could see.

One of them is an old grey-haired Reservist with seven children. By good
luck they struck a road which led them to some Coldstreams' billet, a
house. There they were fed with tea, bread, bacon, and jam, and stayed
an hour, but didn't get dried.

Then these C.G.'s had to go into action, and the Sergt. took them on to
some Grenadier Guards' billet. By this time he and one other had to be
carried by the others. There they stayed the night (Xmas Day) and saw
the M.O.'s of a Field Ambulance, who sent them all into hospital at
Bethune, whence we took them on this train to Rouen, all severely
frost-bitten, weak, and rheumatic.

An infant boy of nineteen was telling me how he killed a German of 6 ft.
3 in. "Bill," I says, "there's one o' them big devils (only I called
him worse than that," he said politely to me), "and we all three
emptied our rifles into him, and he never moved again."

9 P.M.--At Sotteville, off Rouen. We got unloaded at 1 P.M. and then
made a dash for the best baths in France.

_Tuesday, December 29th._--We've had a quite useful day off to-day.
Still at Sotteville; had a walk this morning, also got through arrears
of mending and letter-writing. They played another football match this
afternoon, and did much better than last time, but still got beaten.

_Wednesday, December 30th._--S