Our old friend ‘Fluff,’ Lieut. – Col. Stuart Taylor (West Yorks) has recovered from his wounds. He returned to command his battalion on September 16th and, although he cannot say as much, I think it highly likely he is somewhere in the region of the Somme.

We are most grateful that he has found the time to write to the boys:

“We are living in stirring times now and there is much doing. I wish I could tell you all about it, but the censor rules are very strict.

There are one or two things I hate in the trenches worse than the Boches – rats and cats.

The rats are enormous grey shiny looking things with great fat tails, and they come out in swarms at night and eat up all the horrid things they can.

You would think the cats would eat the rats, but they do not, I regret to say. They are kittens which have been born since the war, in the desolated and ruined villages and towns of Northern France, and they are rapidly forming a new species of wild cat, living in old disused trenches or holes in the ground and coming out at night.

There is so much to eat lying about that they do not kill the rats or mice.”

This is not the way of nature, but it is to be supposed that war is bound to have some sort of effect on all who partake in it – even cats and rats, it now seems.