France Feb. 24th. 1915.

Dear Mother;

You will get from Mabel a resume of the news I send her but I will find time for a letter to you too.

We have returned to our first billet after four days in the trenches. We have had lessons on all the bad business now and are considered qualified to take charge of a section of trenches when the rest of the Canucks have been through a similar training. I have had such experiences as I cannot put on paper and hope to have the censor pass them.

I have had my first experience in burying the killed, four at once in three graves, three English and one Canadian, two other Canadian were buried in the trenches, it being too dangerous to bring them out. The four I buried were laid among fallen Soldiers in a pretty R.C. cemetery three hundred and fifty yards behind the trenches. It pressed home the grim reality of War, when the four bodies carried shoulder high on stretchers, and covered with a blanket, were brought one behind the other and laid beside the open graves, then lowered and the earth thrown in upon them. About fifty Soldiers who were available attended and did Military honours to their dead brothers. Our casualties in four days were less than twenty. The marvel is that there were no more, for the Germans put twenty shells into the trenches, all exploding with great violence, but injuring no one. It seems almost impossible.

I had some wonderful opportunities just before they went into the trenches. I visited them in their billets and held little services, those will live in the memory for life. To hear 150 men in a room 40 X 30 feet sing in a whisper "Nearer my God to thee" and "Lead kindly light" at the dead of night as they lay beside the rifle they would pick up and carry forth at 2.30 A.M. and to glance at them in the flickering light of a single candle, all kneeling with bent heads as I prayed for them and with them and to hear them join in "Our Father which art in Heaven" - Forgive us our trespasses etc - is something never to be forgotten. Many a man will feel that he can never be quite the same again. I must now close, with love to all

Your affectionate Son,

Will