1st Dec/1914

Dear Mother

I have’nt written for so long, but really and truly I have’nt had a minute. In fact I quite forget when I last wrote, I think it was about the 20th or so, when we were in reserve. Well we came out of reserve for a week’s rest, into some very cornfortable billets here. We arrived one night, and next day got orders to go out into the trenches again to relieve another brigade which had a rotten time and had got rather badly mauled. So much for our week’s rest! which we badly needed, as the men were really tired after all that long time on end. So off we started and got out into the trenches again on the night of the 25th. The trenches we went into were some round which there had been some very heavy fighting on the 23rd & 24th, and you can’t imagine the state they were in.

First of all our troops had occupied them, then on the night of the 22nd the Germans had bombed them out of it and finally captured the trench; then on the 23rd our troops tried all day to recapture them, and failed, losing very heavily. This was on the day we were marched off for our weeks rest. On our way here the general sent an ADC to catch our brigade & take them off to all this fighting over the old trench as a reinforcement. Well the A.D.C found the other 3 regiments of the Brigade, but missed us, & that’s how we managed to get one night’s rest anyhow & were’nt hauled out till next day.  Well, the story goes –

Ted was interrupted here.