Corpl. George L. Smith,
24th Sanitary Section, R.A.M.C.T.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The roof of a dug-out, as usually designed, is a device for keeping the shrapnel out and letting the water in.
WHAT FRANK THOUGHT
A private sat under a tree. It was not the Lone Pine, but the other one. Winter had stripped it of foliage, and all around was bleak and uninviting.
In his bronzed fist, which had carried buckets and biscuits since April 25th, he held a letter, highly perfumed, from his “young lady”—she whom he had escorted on so many occasions to Sydney’s social events in the piping days of peace.
He had not heard from home since embarkation, and had often wondered, as he bathed in just enough water to temper a whisky and shaved by means of a lethal instrument better fitted for cutting a hedge than a beard, whether they really cared. A fit of hesitancy now seized him, and he hardly liked to read the letter. By means of the top of a tin of sardines which he had bought cheap—two bob he had paid for it on the beach—he saw his unshaven face, the neck of his soiled shirt, and his crop of unkempt hair. He was interrupted in this by the attentions a “little friend” was paying him. This he located. He then lighted the end of a cigarette (which he had kept stowed away in the top of his puttees) before risking another glance at himself in the top of the two-bob tin of sardines.
“What a guy,” he murmured. “If Jessie could see me now, would she turn me down for some cold-footed, well-groomed fellow? I don’t think. She’s all right, and would understand it’s no gipsy tea we’re at.”
However, it was with some slight nervousness that he opened the letter. Following the customary greetings, Jessie wrote: