G'day IanB,

I was working down, tinking of suggesting Ewam McColl's Moving On Song ... but I see the Keith suggested it. It is subtle ... but has a hard hit for those who think ...

On another point, John McCutcheon's Christmas in the Trenches and the events of 25 December 1914 came to my mind the other day when, in a totally different line of research, I came upon the note that "The Germans first threw grenades in to English trenches on 27 December 1914".

There is no mention of dates for English grenade use, but they had seen trench warfare in the Russo-Japanese war of a few tears before and went into WWI with one crude grenade ... a dodgy glass jar of high explosive on the end of a stick and fitted with a contact fuse. Many struck the trench wall and killed the thrower. It all brings you back to earth even more abruptly that John McCutcheon's last verse.

Regards,

Bob Bolton