If you came out in pith helmets the corporation sand cart spreads sand in front of you, and you are supposed to be in Egypt. To accomplish The Great Practical Joke, Troops are trained to exercise their imagination. They begin by being soldiers in blue, and imaginary uniforms. Then they do arm drill and imagine they have rifles. Then they do Brigade operations and have an imaginary enemy, get killed by imaginary shells, shoot with imaginary rifles, fire imaginary cartridges out of imaginary guns. In the end there is Heath Robinson and his gun. I can't venture to read this letter over, and I am afraid no one else will. But my imagination is now so good that I can almost imagine my little Mother doing so, if no one else has the courage to do so.
Well the others have returned and common sense is returning, so I must shut up.
Good night, little Mother, and much love to all,
P.S.--I shall soon be home on leave as a lunatic.
11TH SUFFOLKS, B.E.F., Wednesday, January 12th.
I am beginning letter No. 2, so that, although you will not get it for a few days, I may add to it occasionally and despatch it to you when it reaches a decent length, and before it reaches the colossal and iniquitous verbosity of my former screed--a monologue on the Great European War.
I finished letter 35 last night. To-day we again spent in improving our billets. The sailor is always known as the handy man, but I doubt if he would have a look in even with amateur Tommies like ourselves. We made scrapers for each barn door out of nothing, mats to scrape our boots on out of straw, roadways over muddy places out of brushwood and tins, &c., and incinerators out of mud. We could easily make bricks without straw.
The G.O.C. inspected our billets this morning and complimented our arrangements, and seemed highly pleased with them. The men are extremely smart at present; the easy time and change of circumstances seems to have returned to them all the original keenness we had rather lost during our rather boring time during the last few months.
We had our first shot fired in anger yesterday. A Taube flew over a mile or two up and a long distance away, and a sentry, to show his appreciation of its attentions, loosed off his rifle, much to his own surprise and his neighbours.