Tag Archives: letter to Cecily

23 July 1916

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Transcription

8th Queens

B. E. F.

23. 7. 1916.

My dear Cecily,

My very best & heartiest congratulations on the certificate.  I expect it is a bit hard to realise after 3 years work [illegible] that you won’t have to be continually grinding away at the R. A. M. but it will gradually dawn on you & I expect you will appreciate a holiday. I am most awfully glad that you have got it.  I have had letters from Glad & Willie to-day written in the train on their way to Liverpool.  I sent them a wire to the Mendi, which I hope reached them in time. The drink has not yet arrived but is probably on the way.  We are still in a farm & a whole one ^ at that which is rather a change from one I was in a short time ago.  It went by the name of Stinking Farm & it was really extraordinary how any of it was still standing, as it had been badly strafed.  It had only been built in 1914, so I suppose it stood the shells better than most.  As a matter of fact, the stink has long since passed away, but it was full of mosquitoes & most uncomfortable, so I was glad to get out of it.  On the last night we

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managed to set the dug-out on fire, so the Bosch probably noted the fact & shelled the place the next morning, but of course we had gone by then.

I hear that some of our aeroplanes down south are flying as low as 600 ft. over the Bosch lines & counting the numbers of Bosches in their trenches which must be an extraordinary useful bit of information for us & exceedingly distasteful to the Hun.  Normally they fly over at about 8000 ft & get pretty badly strafed then, so what it is like at 600 I can’t imagine.  Perhaps at that height the Bosch archies can’t get at them properly.

I am enclosing a present for yourself & am sending Odd one too, an un-birthday present.

Love to all

Jack.


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