Letters From the Front

Dated:

I just returned from the front for a few days rest, after having spent something like a month's time in and about the trenches. We had a fairly strenuous time of it, but were lucky enough considering what we were up against. S. H. Quick , a friend of mine, left for the front last night. His body returned this afternoon for burial. Sid Williams another chum, has been carried to hospital. These two were hit by the same shell. Bene De Gaspero , an Italian of our corp, was also killed a couple of weeks ago. These three were all first contingent men, who have come through thus far without a scratch. Signaler Maclintock was with the two former when they received the visit from the shell, and was very nearly included in the casualty lists, but escaped with a hole in his cap, a rip in the coat sleeve and minus part of his pants, and extremely narrow escape indeed. The only injury Fritz has been able to do to me during the past few weeks, has been to blow up my chapeau. I happen to be called upon to go out and mend a broken wire, so I threw my cap on top of my dugout, and crawled out along the wire. I fixed the break all right, but I'm returning found that my dugout had disappeared along with my cap.

The base-ball season has opened here. We played our first game yesterday. There was a large crowd, and the bleachers were packed. The Cdn. Trench Mortars were our opponents and we were their victims. The game lasted seven innings, as we had lost all our trenches by that time, and had to surrender. I think we scored four runs, and the enemy is still counting up theirs. I made a sensational play in the last inning. I was rushing from third in an attempt to steal home. The pitcher whipped the ball to the catcher, he reached out to touch me, when, would you believe me, a stray bullet came whistling along and knocked the ball clean out of his hand, and needless to say, I slid safely over the plate amid a thunder of applause.

The life of a soldier is certainly full of variation. One day you may be in a hell that would make Dante blush for shame at the inadequate manner in which he pictured his Inferno. The next you may be in a pretty French town, attending picture shows, ball games and admiring the dirty faced, wooden shoed French mademoiselles. At present I am sitting in a Y.M.C.A. tent, a gramophone is furnishing music. Outside a couple of airplanes are dipping and curving and practicing dodging shells, streams of artillery and ammunition wagons, buses, etc., are passing along the road on their way to the front, and everywhere there is activity of some sort.