In a gale last night many tents were blown down. We spent all day putting them up again. The cook house, a substantial frame building, has also blown down again.
When I got back I found a Christmas hamper, a bunch of holly and a small box of maple sugar and packet of cigarettes from the Duchess of Connaught with her Christmas card. All parcels for the troops came in duty free. Our postal system is very efficient. We get our letters as regularly as we would in a town.
People send us so many cigarettes that we sometimes have too many. I wish we could get more tobacco and fewer cigarettes. If you remember during the Boer War the authorities tried to break the “Tommy” of his “fags” by giving him more tobacco. Now they really seem to encourage cigarette smoking, although it really doesn't matter; the same things which are harmful in towns [pg 050] don't have the same bad effects when we are living in the open.
All leave is up by the 10th of January for everybody, officers and men.
The Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry have gone to the front to the envy of everybody. It is a splendid battalion with fine officers. They have been lying next to our lines and we have made many friends with the “Pats.”
Cerebro-spinal meningitis has broken out, and in spite of all efforts to check it, seems to be gaining ground. Several officers have died with it, and I believe that four battalions are quarantined. We have to use chloride of lime on the tent floors and around the lines. My friend Pat calls it “Spike McGuiness.” The worst of a disease like this is that a patient never recovers. Even a cure means partial paralysis for life. I believe that Salisbury Plain is known for it, and I hear that all the ground that troops are now occupying is to be ploughed up when we leave. As far as that goes we have ploughed [pg 051] it up a bit already, but a systematic ploughing will make it more regular. The subsoil is only four inches, then you come to chalky clay. The tent-pegs when they are taken from the ground are covered with chalk.
I think that the Canadian Contingent has had a pretty raw deal. We're not even included in the six army divisions which are going to France by the end of March. Wish I had joined the “Princess Pats,” who are already there. We want to fight.
We're having a beastly time as compared with the Belgian refugees and the German prisoners in England. We're beginning to wonder if we are ever going to the front. There is now some talk of billeting us in Bristol. We've been under arms nearly five months and should be good fighting material by now. With a similar number of men the Germans would have done something by this time.
All the last week the selected few of us have been working separately on a course of work [pg 052] to qualify us for commissions. We have had to study hard every spare minute when not drilling each other.