CLOTHED IN MUD

Southland Times, Issue 17469, 25 March 1915, Page 6

CLOTHED IN MUD

EATING CAT TO KEEI’ W.A CM. After Ute usual spell in tlie lirinjr line we are buck a few miles for the usual rest, but most of out time being taken up with cleaning, the days soon ko by tsays the letter of n private of the Honourable Artillery Company). However, we do sleep at nights (I've borrowed a length of stair-carpet for it bed), which is more than these weather-worn trenches allow us. We are'nt any worse off than the llegttiar regiments in tills respect, hut It's pretty bad. ' Onr great consolation is that the Germans are probably worse off, so we hang on cheerfully. Our company has been very lucky so f ar one wounded only—the battalion casualties are HO or 10. t believe. \V e have been for weeks now brigaded with three of the toughest regiments, and have, done as they have done. One of them paid us a compliment 11m other day. We wore plodding through one of these shattered villages in the dark, and a voice came from a cart by the roadside : "Who's this?" "H.A.C." might 'ave known your steady old trot. Another time a man in a passing regiment called. "What mob’s this ” and one of our corporals rolled out the full title "Honourable Artillery Company." "Ho I" said the voice, “we're the Honourable Middlesex. Wo often wonder is people at homo ever realise what we look like. Some of onr men used to be the last word in mufti Now they troop in from the trenches literally plastered from head to foot with mud. unshaven, and greyfaced. One never gets properly clean again. „ , ... I hope your Belgian relief scheme will go well. There's a further justice in vour keeping the Belgians than you'd imagine, for their ruined, deserted houses provide us with wood for our dug-out roofs, with cooking appliances, and various odds and ends overlooked by the Germans—a tine rice pudding, fur instance, last week, but that's unofficial—not being a ration. Can you get hold of bachelor buttons? We find them the best thing for trousers, because we have to wear so many clothes that the strain of a bend is terrific. We are getting like Esquimaux—eating as much and as fatty food as wo can to keep out the cold. I wear your sprig of holly between the blackened grenade and the shapeless war-hat that adorns my head until Twelfth Night. In the trench, es if. serves as “portable natural cover" when on the bio