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Guildford
Aug 16th 1916
Dear Norman
It is quite a long time since I wrote
you a letter, but I'm sure Al tells you all the news. Your last letter was so
full of question marks though that I feel I must try to answer them, that is if
I can remember what they were, as I have not now got the letter.
I received your letter along with Al's
and Phils just before the advance and decided I would take them with me for
luck. I put them away safely in my portfolio with my signal forms but when I got
wounded they were left behind in the trench. Well we'll say they bought me luck
for here I am now in Blighty where everyone I'm sure wishes to go some time or
another.
You asked about the snow. We had a
great time with the snow coming up from Marseilles. Every time the train stopped
we got out and pelted each other with snowballs, and although it was nice and
soft when we picked it up it was very hard when rolled into a ball, and you did
not forget it in a hurry if you happened to get a knock with it.
You want to know if we sleep in the
trenches, whether we have beds and what the dugouts are like. First of all there
are dugouts which are most comfortable and there are others. unfortunately there
are too many of the others.
I have always had a fairly decent
dugout, that being one of the privileges of a signaller, and in charge of the
others. I generally had a bunk too made out of wire netting which was always
fixed up in the operating room where I always had to be. The German dugouts are
the best. They are just like decks of a ship- wonderful they are, and no mistake
about it. Of course theirs were made to live in until the end of the war. We
could not have such luxurious ones because we had to push forward. The huns
believe that they would not be driven out of these wonderful creations but they
made a mistake, for we drove them out like rats out of a hole.
The last line of trenches we took from
the huns had no dugouts in at all. The only way to get a few winks was to sit up
against the parapit, and this is what I was doing when I got wounded, rather a
rude awakening wasn't it.
My word Norman you caricature drawings
are coming on. You ought soon to be making your fortune doing them for the
papers. I think this is all for the present, give my love to all from Arnold.
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