Sunday Feb 7/15

Dear Mother

We are back in billets again but we go off again tomorrow night.  Our company dont go back into the trenches tomorrow night though.  We will be the supports, and will be behind the trenches doing fatigue.  We do three days in the trenches, and three days is plenty.  It is muddy and wet, and you have to get what sleep you can sitting up.  I got less than six hours sleep in the three days.  The second day we were in the Germans shelled us, and the last shell they fired killed one man.  Their snipers wounded a couple more.  They have good snipers.  The shells the artillery were firing at us we call “Little Willies”.  Before we took up this piece of trench we are holding now we were going in, two platoons at a time with an English regiment.  We got a few men wounded there.  One was shot in the arm.  He went out in front of the trenches to bring in an English soldier who had been shot while he was cutting the German barbed wire entanglement.  You’ll have to excuse the bad writing as my fingers are cold.  Well, Mother I have nothing more to say.  I will be glad when we get on the move in the spring.  I have your shirt but I am afraid to put it on yet, because it will get lousy if I do.

So long
Charlie