I received yesterday a letter from you and one from Win. I am sorry to hear you had not heard from me for some time. How long was it? as I have never been a week yet without sending off a letter. Only once has there been more than five or six days between letters. My last was sent off on Friday night and the previous one the Friday before. By the time you receive this you will be glad to know that I am out of the trenches (D.V.) for 16 days, and shall have a nice rest. Yesterday we fired some ranging shots and were unsuccessful, as there was a strong head wind. I was firing obliquely thus:
and the first shot got blown right back into our wire and put me in a fearful funk. To-day I had my usual breakfast at 10-0 in bed, washed, shaved, and then went along to see "A" Company Commander to arrange about firing. On the way to his headquarters I saw a captain of the R.H.A., and found out he had come to be in command of a heavy trench mortar battery in our brigade. While talking, he mentioned the name of a man's father whom I knew at Jesus, and then I found out he had been at Jesus; he was in his third year when I was in my first, I had met him and knew his name well and he knew mine. I was extremely pleased to have him in the brigade. This afternoon a major in command asked me to get on to a dug-out in the German lines, the roof of which was showing over the parapet and from where a sniper had killed one of his men. I did so. We fired four shots, all landed in the trench, the fourth blowing up the dug-out. That sniper snipes no more. The infantry were awfully bucked and several men have spoken to me as I wander along the trenches about our good shooting. It was a long-range and there was a difficult wind. I was very pleased. The Germans retaliated with mortars, but fell short of our front line. Then I went and had tea, having done a good day's work. To-night the company I mess with kindly invited Lloyd-Barrow, the Jesus man, to dinner, and I am just going to bed now. I will send this letter off to-morrow night when we arrive in billets. I am afraid that it is rather short, but one has very little time on one's hands in the trenches, I find.
Yesterday we came out of the trenches. In the morning I got up early and was cleaned for the fray at 10-0 o'clock when with his and I with my guns we played havoc for an hour or so. The men were very pleased when I removed what they declared to be a cookhouse. This war becomes quite incomprehensible to you once you have seen the real thing; no tactics, no strategy, just men turned moles. I believe in time we should become sort of Cave-men; our eyes would have developed into sorts of periscopes, our feet would have become web-footed to help us to stand up on wet duck boards; there would be a new type of man. As it is, it is quite haphazard and pointless. Just somebody makes himself disagreeable when he has nothing better to do. It is so difficult to hurt anyone actually in trenches; I think a mortar is the only thing that can do so. With dozens of shells sent over in the last ten days or so (40 yesterday morning) there has not been a single man in the brigade wounded by shell fire, and rifles and machine guns are the same. The casualties occur only in a push when one goes over the parapet, and that is not war, only a big field day. I was talking to a sergeant-major who had been through Neuve Chapelle, and said that it was just like a field day in Salisbury Plain, men marching in fours in all sorts of formations. His battalion halted after a little, ate its lunch, and then went on, got a bit too far forward, returned and dug themselves in, and trenches again. It is a hole and corner affair. We were all very cheered yesterday morning by the official news of the French successes at Verdun, and we all got obstreperous and terrorised poor Fritz. The men say they infinitely prefer the front line trenches to training at home. They have more comfortable sleeping accommodation, better food and less work. I like it better myself. Then what seems funny is to come out of the trenches and to be in perfect safety two and three miles back. I went on a course to-day; demonstration in mortars.
We are billeted in a topping farm, and I have a huge great room with a big bed and a fire. They are nice clean people in the farm. The men have a loft, and use of kitchen for sitting in. We are within shelling distance, but the people in the farm have been living in the farm, carrying-on their ordinary work, without the young men right through everything, and the farm is absolutely undamaged. Well, I must go to bed, little Mother. Did you receive my letters asking May to get me gramophone catalogues of Decca and Master's Voice gramophones as soon as possible? Parcel received. Slacks, shoes, candle, biscuits, &c., very welcome indeed. Stir Ellen up to make another cake, larger; I will write to her. Also can you send me Mars oil for boots.
Much love to all,
From your loving Son,
ALEC.