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[page 76]
149
(7).
the manner of a man shoeing xxx a horse, and by constant rubbing and chafing restoring and keeping up the circulation. If some- thing of this sort is not done, frost bite or trench feet (these are not quite the same thing) will surely result with painful xxxx consequences to the soldiers often finishing with the loss of a couple of toes, or a foot, or perhaps both feet.
Number three post is further out towards the enemy line and we have not crawled half the distance before a machine gun spots us and we both dive again into a shell hole for shelter. These shell holes contain about 5 or 6 feet of water which is just now topped with 10 or 12 inches of ice and therefore carried us well. It is rather a cold resting place and after a few minutes we decide to push on, but he sees us go into the shell hole and is waiting for us to come out. "Tut, tut, tut," goes the gun and we slide back into the hole to wait awhile. After a few minutes we hear him firing again but as the bullets do not appear to be coming our way he must have sighted someone else moving about, so now is our chance and out we scramble and do our best crawling speed to No.3 post. "Good night, Sergeant". "Good night, sir. Very bright to-night. We could see you crawling along fully 100 yards away and against the snow you looked the size of horses". This was poor compliment to our crawling abilities, but still we let that pass and enquired after the war as far as that post was concerned. The frozen tea was uppermost in this Sergeant's mind, Fritz was quite a secondary consideration. After xxxxxxxxxxxx consoling with him about the tea and the frozen bread (which cracked like biscuit) he reports that Fritz has been troubling them a lot to-night with a couple of machine guns. "I've tried to get the one opposite here with the Lewis gun but he is rather difficult to locate and so far I