Either of us had a parcel we used to say, ‘Oh hell, old Joe Scragg’s got a parcel, lets go along and see, and we’d go along the trench and they’d have a bit of a share out, just the four of us.

On the occasion I had a bloomin’ great ‘un, oh hell, and then when I’d cut this cake up and had a bit each, and some odds and ends, fags and so on. I said, ‘Blimey, I’ve got two balaclava helmets, I don’t want two of them. Anyone want to buy one?’

So old Fatty Odell said, ‘Yeh, I’ll buy one of them, how much do you want for it?’

‘Oh, I says, give me a dollar’. So he gave me this dollar – five bob, and when we’d finished I read the letter from me mother and she said, ‘I hope you enjoyed the parcels and the balaclava helmets, they will you and Sid warm, because Sid’s mum and me have put together and made a big parcel’. I’d given his helmet away! I’d flogged it! So I said to old Fatty, ‘Oh blimey Fatty, give it me back’.

‘ No bloody fear, I ain’t giving you that back’. But of course he was only pulling my leg, so of course I gave him his five bob back.

At night, me and old Sid got these helmets on, and I said to old Sid, ‘Oh blimey, when Old Birchall comes along, Captain Birchall, when he comes along, he’ll be as jealous as hell’.

So it was in the early hours of the morning, it were cold and I’d got his helmet on, old Birchall came along the trench, he looked at me and said, ‘take that bloody thing off your head’. I said, ‘Why?’

‘Take it off. You’ve got that on, a German could put his head over the trench and tap you on the shoulder and you won’t know he’s there, take it off’.

Oh hell, I never did wear it again.