The death of his chum George was often in Sydney Baxter's thoughts. He
writes:


_May 21st, 1916._

"I have heard from ----; he also mentions to me the
opportunity of revenge. I can quite understand and have felt
that a life for a life would wipe out the debt, but when my
mind dwells on these things I always try to think what
George would have me do, and I know his answer would be:
'Why, the German was only doing his duty. I should have done
the same myself.' That is true. We fire, but we little know
what suffering we cause. We do our duty and the Germans do
theirs. It rests with the Heads as to clean methods or not."

The turn in the trenches soon came, and it was a rough turn too. The
following are extracts from letters written to his mother:


_June 6th, 1916._

"I have been unable to write before, as we have been having
an extremely busy and horrible time. From the day we entered
the trench till now has been one series of heavy
bombardment, an absolute rain of shells everywhere--a whole
week of it. How so many managed to come out alive I don't
know.

"We lost four killed in our platoon, including one of my