y 9.30, etc. It's not a bad job, but on a
Good Friday it's tough.

"Sunday was as usual,--Church Parade in the morning, and
free in the afternoon, when we had a cricket match. Monday
was the worst day of all. We were called out at 8.30, and
from then to 12.30 had to clean up the roads, scrape mud out
of ditches, and make drains in our village streets. Nice
occupation, wasn't it? The afternoon was not so bad, but we
might have had a holiday. Instead we had to go and throw
live bombs for practice purposes. The evening, as usual, was
free. That ends my Eastertide, and in spite of what sounds a
far from good one I enjoyed it immensely and count myself
lucky to be out of the trenches for it.

"I ought to have mentioned earlier that we are in a village
behind the firing line, in reserve; we shall be having our
turn of trenches in a few days, and so we are making the
best of our time out. The weather is glorious, and we are
having a good time. I do not doubt that there will be some
hard work shortly along the front, but it's difficult to say
what will happen. Only the folk in charge know. We only
obey, and really it's just as well to be in the dark and so
escape the worry beforehand."

The death of his chum George was often in Sydney Baxter's thoughts. He
writes:

_May 21st, 1916._

"I have heard from ----; he also mentions to me the
opportunity of revenge. I can quite understand and have felt
that a life for a life would wipe out the debt, but when my
mind dwells on these things I always try to think what
George would have me do, and I know his answer would be:
'Why, the German was only doing his duty. I should have done
the same myself.' That is true. We fire, but we little know
what suffering we cause. We do our duty and the Germans do
theirs. It rests with the Heads as to clean methods or not."

The turn in the trenches soon came, and it was a rough turn too. The
following are extracts from letters written to his mother:

_June 6th, 1916._

"I have been unable to write before, as we have been having
an extremely busy and horrible time. From the day we entered
the trench till now has been one series of heavy
bombardment, an absolute rain of shells everywhere--a wh