We are waiting for something to turn up to be shot at, but up to now, though their artillery has been making a fiendish row all along our front, we haven't seen as much as a mosquito's eyelash to shoot at. That's why I am able to write, and some of us are able to take a bit of rest while the others keep "dick."
There is a fine German airship hanging around like a great blue bottle up in the sky, and now and then our gunners are trying to bring it down, but they haven't done it yet.
It's the quantity, not the quality of the German shells that is having effect on us, and it's not so much the actual damage to life as the nerve-racking row that counts for so much.
Townsmen who are used to the noise and roar of streets can stand it better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far the fittest men are those of regiments mainly recruited in the big cities.
A London lad near me says it's no worse than the roar of motor 'buses and other traffic in the city on a busy day.
[GAELIC SPIRIT IRREPRESSIBLE.]
The Gaelic spirit has not deserted Sergt. T. Cahill under fire. He writes:
The Red Cross girleens with their purty faces and their sweet ways are as good men as most of us, and better than some of us. They are not supposed to venture into the firing line at all, but they get there all the same, and devil a one of us durst turn them away.
Mike Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him and his ways.