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[Page 55]
cover the ground - the main thing. I waited up just long enough to get the official news, which was good, and then turned in and read for a while. The night being dark and rainy was quiet and this morning I woke up fresh from a good sleep. After washing my brushes and cleaning my palette, which I neglected to do last night, I went out and made some sketches of shell holes and a big barrage which was in progress. The shells were bursting in a line and the barrage of black and white smoke columns, looked like a French road, with smoke for poplars. It was the same old rub-a-dub-dub rumble with crashes like great waves breaking - the English on our left getting to grips with the Boche. Yesterday one of our enterprising diggers shot a deer in the wood' and this morning we had venison for breakfast. There are more and more Americans about. Yesterday they were playing ''ball" and yelling in a way that made our fellows laugh. You'd have thought that something of great gravity was in the balance. They and our boys form a mutual admiration society - always together and our officers don't stint their praise of them. It would be difficult too, for they are splendid specimens of manhood; well behaved and mighty intelligent. Isn't it a pity that poor patient Tommy - a good, good chap really, who in our and the Canadian and even American army thrives, and who only suffers from the English "system" - is liked by no one. He's a joke - a hidebound slave with no ingenuity or initiative. He's not allowed them. It takes 7 of them to do what 2 of ours can do. They eat cheese till they look like one. Individualistic England is a pond with a few great pike and a lot of Minnows; the minnows being there for the pikes' use. Some change will have to come and I think only the Laborites can do it. The trouble is they nobble the Labor leaders with fine and dandy jobs. It's sunny one minute and darkness and downpour the next. If it decides to clear up I must get out, so this is all for to-day.
Bois d'Escardonneuse
26/7/18
Yesterday after all I managed to get out at the fag-end of the day and do some work on my picture. The road to my position