LETTERS TO CHILDREN FROM THE FRONT. [To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR?'] Sin,—As an example of light-heartedness in the trenches, you may perhaps see your way to print the enclosed. It is one of a series of letters from my brother-in-law which strikes a different chord from
what is generally heard. Muffle is my daughter, aged six years.— " 8th February, 1916.
MY DEAR MUFFIE,—Hero we are about the middle of a turn of duty in the trenches. We were in the support trenches just behind the firing line till last night, when we came to the reserve trenches. In the support lino we lived in a deep, deep dug-out—so deep that we had to burn candles or lamps all day as well as all night ; and as it was made by pygmy men, evidently, you can fancy how long it took Uncle John and Uncle Howard and all the other six-foot officers of B Company to descend and ascend. And as the stairway was also the chimney for our brazier how we all enjoyed it. The only way to go down was backwards. If you walked along the trench without looking you sometimes went down somebody else's dug-out in other postures—but backwards was the only way to get down your own. The steps of the stairs were like the steps of the Pyramids (q.v.), and the beams holding up the chalk roof were go placed as to catch you on the back when you weren't expecting it and throw you forward on your hands on the dirty staircase. I never felt so much sympathy with rats and moles and rabbits before or so much distaste for safety. Not that I haven't had to crawl into deep dug-outs before—but it was never my misfortune to reside in one so profound.
The dug-out we are in now is an area,' so to speak. It is just one small flight of stairs down. It isn't very large. The sides are all lined with planking. There is a verminous-looking shelf-bed which takes up half the room, and two of us risk sleeping there, and two on some filthy straw beneath it. Then there is a 'table' 18 ft. by 4 ft. and there is a stove in the corner. Having been built by the Boches, this dug-out has a ceiling of eight- or ten-inch baulks. Then somebody, long years ago, must have been worried by the rats and mice kicking chalk into his tea, so up he got and fastened a sheet of dirty cloth across most of the roof. It must have been dirty even then, otherwise it couldn't be so dirty now. I never saw anywhere so populous with rats and mice. At night the roof of this place swarms with great lusty, husky fellows seeking what they may devour, and they and the mice squeak and squabble in the walls. Every little while a big chap runs across that sheet above us, and it bulges with his bloated body. You can tell his size because his toes stick through the cloth : and he usually knocks down some chalk on you, and you look up and wonder whether he is coming through himself and marvel that the ancient material suffices to support him. I think some of 'em must drink the dregs out of the rum jars, because one out-size forgot he had come to the end of the cloth and nearly fell over. As I was directly beneath him I expected to have his fore-paws clasped round my throat and his rear toe-nails in the back of my neck ; but he managed to recover himself. (Uncle D— has just got up to chase away what he calls a — busy, — verminous creature' that is tearing the paper off a cake. His language is more forcible than polite.) I suppose they walk on our faces when we are asleep. But they don't get so very much time for that either, we sleep so little ; or when we do sleep we sleep so hard that we don't care if they chow our moustaches and brush their hair with our eyelashes. Of course perhaps they are really princes and princesses in disguise. I say perhaps, because I don't really know ; I hope they aren't, for we are very rude to them. Anyway they can't be really nice princes
and princesses or they wouldn't eat other people's food without so much as saying By your leave' or 'Thank you. They can't be fairies, any- way ; maybe they're just hobgoblins. What do you think ? You know or'nery ' people who don't know nuffin and who think reason explains everything would just tell you the reason why most bullets don't hit anybody is just that they miss 'em. But people who really understand—I mean people who have enough imagination to get up in their dreams and go out and see the fairies dancing on the dewy sward when the sunbeams twinkle on the crystal globules—these people know better. And I can tell you just how it is. You see the fairies have eyes like marigolds and as keen as eagles'. They see ten thousand times as quick as mortals do, and they move just as speedily as thoughts do. They see the bullets coming out of the rifles ; and as it comes each bullet is bestridden by a fairy who tweaks its nose and guides it harmless along, and the fairy sings sweetly all the time. That is why when a bullet whizzes past your head you hear it humming like a bee, or droning like a bumblebee, or maybe whistling or whining or singing. But sometimes you don't even hear that, and yet the bullet doesn't hit you. You just hear it pass with a breathing whisper or a gusty noise. That is when no fairy has seen it in time to get astride and guide it, but all the fairies near a soldier just gather round and blow it past. Sometimes the bullet gets so white hot on its way that the fairy has to jump off, and then perhaps somebody gets hurt, so now all the fairies are getting asbestos pants for their spring costumes. Don't you think that is jolly ? Well, there's nothing else really important to say. Tell Teddy that the Primus stove is proving very handy ; and I nearly boiled my whiskers off before shaving this morning. Best love to everybody and especially to Teddy, Muffet, and dean.—From your loving Uncle, Joaar. My platoon sergeant told me he had seen plenty of rats, but never anything like those here. Ho said they pressed so heavy on his chest he had to light a candle, and then he saw a rat so big that he mistook it for a horse."
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