It is Christmas Eve once more, and we are still fighting mud and water and Germans. I hope that by next Christmas we shall be doing so no longer. We hope to come out of the front line on Tuesday next, and have four days in Brigade Reserve, and then go back a good long way for a rest. So about New Year's Day we shall probably be on the move somewhere, and we hope that our long-looked-for rest of several weeks' duration may actually come to pass at last. But we shall see. I have just been wading through the mud and water of the trenches, and they are pretty bad, but we are all very cheerful, and try to make the best of our Christmas-time.
CHRISTMAS EVE (to his Sister).
It is Christmas Eve once more, and I have just come back from wading through the mud and water of front line trenches. I am tired and wet and dirty, and would that the men of strife would cease their noise and hear the Angels sing. But we must keep up our hearts. One gets sick to death sometimes of it all, but still it goes on and on, and we somehow live or dream through it. The night is clear with a bright moon, and it is dry at the moment. Pumps and mud and water and sandbags and chalk and bullets and more mud and bayonets and gum-boots and shells and signal messages and artillery retaliation, seem sometimes to be all jumbled up, and dance before your eyes, and haunt you night and day. But at other times things are not so bad, and everybody is really very cheerful.... I've got nothing to give you this Christmas except my LOVE, from the midst of all the dancing muddle of mud and rain and other things.
EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
We are grateful to those who were beside James during his last days, for telling us about them, as well as for the loving care which they bestowed upon him, and the kind words of appreciation which they wrote.
Captain Campbell was one of the last to be with him. He writes:—
'Poor Lusk was hit shortly after noon on Christmas Day. He had come up to the trenches[[1]] for his usual morning tour along with Major Graham. He had looked into Keith's and my 'dug-out,' and then gone along into 'A' Company's lines himself, the C.O. (Major Graham) having preceded him by a few minutes, when the trench-mortar came that laid him out.
[[1]] This was near Thiepval.