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We move up now to the firing line, wondering and guessing if there will be much doing Of course thats mostly the line of question the boys we are releiving are asked. My job takes me with the Company O.C.. First is a run to Battn. Headquarters with the releif report and also the casualty reportNext thing for me to do is to get wise to all the nearest routes to our platoons and our posts as my job takes me wherever any of our company holds. It does'nt take very long to acquire the good and bad arts of our front. Going back to a few little incidents that have happened in the past. Our first trip to a new sector a bit to the flank of our old front brought us well in to several small towns which we had advanced through earlier back and were now pretty well flattened with shell fire only half of the c llars being intact. Of course our first positions were just clear of the houses at this time and and the change did'nt suit us at all compared to the open country with the shells hitting the houses was more like a mine going up and what with flying brick it was hard to say which might get you. We had been releived in the front line and came into supports in the cellars as a trench was'nt much use there All of us tired had just layed down for a sleep when old Fitz opened up on us and I can assure you it was touch and go whether a fellow would get out of it or not in this particular cellar I was in there were thirty of us and after he jad shot the top off the house we were all figuring about taking a chance of making for a trench a few yards away. I was just tarting to crawl out of a hole in the cellar when he got a

BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 17 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873-1964. Victoria; librarian. / Selected letter from Private John Charles Switzer, 1918.