He told Pips that he was still enjoying his work, although there was one drawback: ‘…you have plenty of responsibility and all bad work is blamed onto you – still, you can’t have money for nothing and there is worry with every job.’ On the whole the work was uneventful, and even on their days off-duty, there was still enough to occupy them that the time seemed to pass very quickly.

He was conscious that the 5th November was coming up soon, and he fondly recalled his father and uncle trying to organise, from a 2 shilling box, small firework displays (‘wonderful to our unpractised eyes’), but burning themselves by lighting “Blue Devils” at the wrong end. He wished he could be at home to ‘indulge in a few of these little pleasures once more.’

He went on to tell Pips about their troubles with the rats, of which he reckoned there must be millions – so many that even a ‘Pied Piper who wasn’t German’ would have to work pretty hard to keep the numbers down. They were doing what they could to protect their supplies – packing everything in sandbags and stringing them from the roof – but the rats were showing great ingenuity in opening tins and chewing their way through metal, so he reckoned it would only be a matter of time before they pulled the sandbags down.

Alexander Field as Mason the cook, with Colin Clive (Stanhope) in the original 1929 Savoy production of Journey’s End. Photo by the Stage Photo Company. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: ESR/19/2/6(4))

He was augmenting his reading of Marcus Aurelius with Scott’s novel, Guy Mannering, and with whatever papers were around. Outside the dugout, the sounds of war continued – ‘tap! tap! tap!’ – and they had recently been startled by some trench mortar shells landing nearby. But still there was scope for plenty of fun, mainly from the men, and Morris in particular, who was a ‘born comedian’:

‘Yesterday we were a bit short of provisions and were arranging our dinner – we had a soup tablet, some tinned pork & beans, a little tin of lobster and some coffee – [Morris] took off his hat in a perplexed way saying:  “Soup – fish – pork – beans – coffee – it don’t seem to rhyme properly, do it?” I leave it to you to puzzle out what he meant.’

[Next letter: 2 November]