Lieut. W. F. Martinson, 13th Essex Regiment, son of Mr. and Mrs. W. Martinson, of Shanghai, writes from France under date of February 98.
We have had a great deal of snow just lately, but it is ever so much warmer and there has been a little rain by way of change. We left our billets on Fri-jay morning and marched 12 miles to a place; we stayed one night and then came on here. At present we are just behind the line and go into the front trenches the ~crrow. British troops en here before. and we are re-ing the French of some more of their line.
Keeble had a cold turkey sent him in a parcel yesterday; we were making a jolly good lunch and in middle of it the Huns dropped shell on the roof. turkey was spoilt by the mess; no The day we had the march, the roads were fearfully ust like glass. A lot of transport were moving men and horses kept falling down, The poor horses sould hardly make any progress at aL
The System of "Keeps."
In a letter dated February Tient Martinson wrote We came out of the trenches on Saturday night after eight days up the line, and have had billet ce Sunday noon. We leave here tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., destination unknown, but believe we are taking over some part of the line which has not been held by the British before. A good 15-mile walk from here. My word, the weather has been bitter the last few days, and the last two days snow has fallen pretty heavily.
We were up some trenches last week which were totally different to any others. Instead of one long line in front of the Huns, we had Tines of breastworks about 100 yards long, with intervals of about 900 yards in between. Then in front of these breastworks there were little "keeps" about 100 yards from the Huns. The real line was 900 yards in the rear of these "keens." At night each officer took turns to visit these "keens.'" The second night we were there one of the "keeps" (we had 12 to our company) was attacked with bombs about half-an-hour before I
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.