when we had a cricket match.  Monday was the worst day of all.  We were called out at 8.30, and from then to 12.30 had to clean up the roads, scrape mud out of ditches, and make drains in our village streets.  Nice occupation, wasn’t it?  The afternoon was not so bad, but we might have had a holiday.  Instead we had to go and throw live bombs for practice purposes.  The evening, as usual, was free.  That ends my Eastertide, and in spite of what sounds a far from good one I enjoyed it immensely and count myself lucky to be out of the trenches for it.

“I ought to have mentioned earlier that we are in a village behind the firing line, in reserve; we shall be having our turn of trenches in a few days, and so we are making the best of our time out.  The weather is glorious, and we are having a good time.  I do not doubt that there will be some hard work shortly along the front, but it’s difficult to say what will happen.  Only the folk in charge know.  We only obey, and really it’s just as well to be in the dark and so escape the worry beforehand.”

The death of his chum George was often in Sydney Baxter’s thoughts.  He writes: 

May 21st, 1916.

“I have heard from ——­; he also mentions to me the opportunity of revenge.  I can quite understand and have felt that a life for a life would wipe out the debt, but when my mind dwells on these things I always try to think what George would have me do, and I know his answer would be:  ’Why, the German was only doing his duty.  I should have done the same myself.’  That is true.  We fire, but we little know what suffering we cause.  We do our duty and the Germans do theirs.  It rests with the Heads as to clean methods or not.”

The turn in the trenches soon came, and it was a rough turn too.  The following are extracts from letters written to his mother: 

June 6th, 1916.

“I have been unable to write before, as we have been having an extremely busy and horrible time.  From the day we entered the trench till now has been one series of heavy bombardment, an absolute rain of shells everywhere—­a whole week of it.  How so many managed to come out alive I don’t know.

“We lost four killed in our platoon, including one of my section, a splendid chap, cool and jolly.  Three of us went to see him buried yesterday—­we had a short service.  His brother is with us, a boy of eighteen, and is naturally very cut up.  We have now sixteen graves where there were none a fortnight ago.  Ten whom I knew personally are gone—­such is war.

“All of us have had a shaking up.  To many it has been their first dose of real grim warfare, and it has been a sore trial for us to lie out in front with shells bursting all round and no cover.  The natural tendency is to run back to the trench and get under cover.  However, I managed to pull through, and feel much more confident of myself, and the Captain