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Victoria. It means such a lot of expense for plumbing. We are having a very long winter. Nearly every night since October there has been a frost. After our long five weeks spell of cold I thought winter was over but for the past week it has been freezing hard again and today we conducted an imaginary attack in a blinding snowstorm.

Did Sister Lizzie write you that I was spending last week in the trenches. We had a quiet time in supports. We were in the part of the line that the French fought for and won yard by yard, ----- It certainly was a devil of a place to find ones way about in. We were about ten miles south or southeast of ----- When I was stationed at ----- for three months I was about the same distance the other side of -----. I had a nice job, being one of three gas sentries, one always on duty to give the alarm by ringing a bell if gas is coming over. We occupied with the corporal in charge what I think must have been one of the first dugouts Fritz ever attempted. It was so small only just room for the three of us to lie down. It was only three feet below the ground and had a shell hit in it would have made a nice little tomb for us. Also had it rained it would have leaked like ----- but in response to my urgent prayers it kept fine for the ----- in though previously the ----- had been frightful. The rest of my company were kept hard at work for seventeen hours a day cleaning up the mud and throwing it over the parapet. I have often mentioned the mud perhaps this will give you some idea of it. On the night we went in two men had to be pulled out of the mud with ropes from the parapet and parapdot of the trench, the mud having risen above the tops of their hip boots.

I think we go back to the same part of the line in a week or so

BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 19 RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 – 1964. Victoria; librarian. Letters from Cecil Harrow Unwin, 1916-1917.