It strikes me that army life differs from what I had expected before arriving here. There is a great deal more mud than the recruiting officers deigned to mention, and a great deal fewer baths. The scent resulting from these two factors alone is indescribable, something for which I suspect the reader of this journal might be grateful.

However, there are also many differences unrelated to the hygiene of us poor “Tommies” so for the sake of posterity I shall outline the normal operations we engage in during a day.

We awake before dawn, when if we are fortunate we can find enough hot water to shave. Most mornings afford the earliest of risers some boiling water, but by the time the slug-a-beds emerge they must make do with it tepid and well-laden with shavings. Dire penalties await the private who parades unshaven, so we must press even the bluntest blades into action. After a filling if insipid breakfast, we must repair and maintain our kit, a mountain of which attends us wherever we may be. Inspection of same follows, with praise handed out by our Captain like peppermints by a maiden aunt. By then the sun has arisen and while he doesn’t warm either the man or the earth, he signals time to march.

We march up and down and around and about, and what a sight we make! Wheeling and turning until any covert observer would be giddy to watch us. One advantage in the present weather is that it keeps a fellow warm! We must all keep in perfect lock-step, woe betide the man who mis-times his footfall as his fate is humiliation by the commanding officer in front of all present. My sense of timing is impeccable, and only rarely do I note everyone else has gone out of step with me. Poor Harry has his name bellowed across the fields at least once a day for missing the time.

These perambulations continue until we are craving our lunch, which a man may only distinguish from his breakfast because he eats in the daylight, rather than by the sputtering of an oil lamp.

We spend our afternoons in a marvellous pastime the officers have devised that is ‘patrolling’. As best as we can determine this is marching by another name, but they slightly relax the need for an entire company to step in perfect unison.

After each excursion they debrief our commander, which means he must describe everything he saw which might have value to the enemy or to ourselves. These are short descriptions as the land around here is barren and devoid of any diversion. I believe the officers responsible take about as much interest in these as we ourselves do.

We have not yet entered the trenches, but we feel less desire to do so by the day. Those members of 8th Battalion who have already started to take their turn are coming back rather less chipper than they went out, and some poor souls do not come back at all.