"I shall stand on top of the parapet tonight and smoke the old year out and the New Year in for your happiness, and the extermination of those blanks* that have caused all our misery." So runs the New Year message sent to Mr and Mrs F. Gardner, of 5 Holly Walk, Luton, by their son Cpl Jack Gardner, who left the employ of the Vauxhall Motors to join the 6th Bedfords.

His New Year's Eve message read: "I am writing these few lines in preference to sleep. Under the present circumstances a fellow is indeed lucky to be able to write at all! Where the support trenches have fallen in we have dug a trench about two feet deep, six feet wide and 20 feet long, and rigged up huts, which resemble rabbit huts more than anything else.

"It is very dangerous relieving those in the trenches and going up to the huts. We just have to lie as flat as we possibly can every three or four yards because the Bosches continually send up , Very lights'. These are like an ordinary rocket which, when fired, makes the surrounding objects plainly visible for a considerable distance. 

"On Monday night, when we were relieving, one or two were late in 'flopping down' when one of those flares went up. Result - Fritz played his machine gun on us, and we had to crawl the whole way. I think more and more every day that we all in B Company have charmed lives, for the bullets were dropping around us like hail stones, and not one was touched!

"I had an exciting five minutes when lying out with two men last night. We were just imagining all sorts of things - we even saw the stakes of the German barbed wire coming towards us, dancing and shaking hands etc - when we were aroused by a rustle in the grass a dozen yards in front. We were going to crawl and find out what it could be when, to our surprise, we discerned quite 50 Huns - a big patrol. All we could do was to lie quiet and bite our lips until they had passed. They had a warm greeting lower down. A party of our bombers ran into them, and ----!

"Tonight I shall be in the line, and if I am not on patrol, I shall stand on top, as I said, and welcome the New Year with all my thoughts for the dears at home."

[The Luton Reporter: Monday, January 17th, 1916]

* 'blanks' is original to the letter and is implying an unsaid swearword.