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[Page 56]
pals for the sociable whisk. Eric Fisher dug him out & fetched him along. All the officers of a certain battalion whose back hair we were parting with 18 prs for a few weeks when they came out were great stickers for this battery & as they are in the next billet in reserve for a bit are keen on coming & watching when we are beefing it in. I am pleased to say that much of the infantry don't regard us as a fancy corps – no mans land is very narrow where they were and its anxious work knocking Fritz's parapet but their Col. who is a fine cove & loves his men used to sool me on & chance it.
This too after Ivan McK. whom he succeeded had given him gloomy forebodings as to shells from behind & the Hun's parapet previously rather nice & neat is bitched now as both the Col. & his lads insisted on it. It is a continual anxiety though as I might write like this now & fall in tomorrow though if testing & adjusting sights (a fetish I learnt from Lloyd) & good layers can see me through I'm OK.
I have a fine lot of lads – Anderson giving me so many over at the start I picked 'em – heaved them out for the least thing & I have only one cove who is not a trier – expected a bad job when he enlisted – a pommy – I was going to swap him for a lad in the D.A.C. & when I asked him would he like to go the sod said Yes but would he have to take ammunition anywhere near the trenches"!! He's getting a few backsheesh trips up there nowadays & no transfer & he'll never forget my remarks to him.
I have young Cullen – a fine big pleasant cove in here - & his young brother who is another Dinkums - & I heard rather distinguished himself on patrol work often comes round. He is a small quite cove, & I think a lot of him. He told me some time ago that Ferguson J's son Capt. was killed the day before in a dugout – after he had been flattened 3 or 4 times by blast of big shells without his nerves showing a trace of it. Jolly hard luck wasnt [it]. I feel most awfully sorry for the Judge.
Oh, Weston is the Doc for a battalion just come in on front. Masters was sleeping in his dugout & told me about a Yankee Doc. Weston? Yes, I will be up there soon as I came to see the Colonel & will look him up & in fact I am