[first part of letter missing]

look after our casualties. I haven’t had a chance to see any of them but they are near our batt. rest billets & I’ll likely see them when I get there. Bill Straith is with them yet & Bill Woods & several others.

I put in a night & a day in the reserve line, doing nothing & now I’m in the support line, digging trenches at night & living in a hole like a rat. The first night here I didn’t even have a hole but after getting good & wet I got busy & helped another fellow dig his funk hole big enough for two. We’ve got a dandy now, with a place for everything but our equipment. It has stay out in the cold. We have even got two holes bored into it so that there will be some circulation when we drop the rubber sheet over the entrance. We can get a lovely soft bed too by just digging up the floor with a spade, about five minutes work.

Well I can tell a whiz bang now when it explodes or even before it explodes if is anywhere near. The first night was out Fritz started dropping them all around us. I never before thought it was possible to flop as fast I can now. The other two nights he didn’t come uncomfortably near us.

Do you know, I wish I were you, for one thing, you always get news from my home a week or two weeks or even three before I do. I learned from your letter that they were planning to have a little bungalow before I heard it from them.

You will likely find a little bit of France on this letter. It’s pretty hard to keep it otherwise & anyways its good clean sand. I haven’t made friends with animals of the crawling & biting species yet but I guess they will be camping with me pretty soon.

Well I think I’ll just eat up half a tin of maconochie's to sustain me in my digging tonight. The first two nights I didn’t eat anything but supper & I was nearly all in when I got back.

John.