I have received your letter. I have also received two parcels of woollen goods from Mrs. Higgins but you can’t carry a lot of stuff about we have enough to carry about...Your biscuits was grand and I enjoyed them. I have also had a nice parcel from Kate she said she enjoyed the Christmas alright at home...It is still very cold out here at night and we have had some snow. it is different to being out in France, very quiet.

A young English soldier wrote [his thoughts] down on scraps of paper, gun fire ringing out all around.  He could not have known that nearly a century later thousands of computer users would be hanging on his every word.

We're in the position of his family.  We're waiting for the next letter or maybe a telegram from the war office saying he's been killed.  That's really the whole point of the blog.  We're as close as we can be to his family waiting for more news.

Three days after, we were called up the line again of course I went this time. We had to go to the front line were it was on the Menin Road no doubt you have heard about it. We were there for three days it was awful the shelling day and night. We relieved the KOYLI about 10 o’clock and what do you think Fritz came over about 5 o’clock next morning we had an exciting time for about one hour and a half I can tell you. but we beat him off he never got in our trenches he was about two hundred strong it was a picked storming party so the prisoners say that captured, they brought liquid fire with them and bombs and all sorts but not many got back we had twenty casuals and the captain got killed a jolly good fellow too. I was pleased to get out of it but did not feel nervous when I saw them coming over. No 1 in our section was on the gun and we used our rifles. Our Coy as to go before the general for the good work we have done. We have just been given a long trousers again as we have had had Short ones all summer.