Transcription
8th Queens
B. E. F.
14. 5. 1916.
My dear Father,
I had a most thrilling account from Cecily of your adventure with the clique Foster & Co. I hope you were really rude to him but I’m afraid you weren’t. It would have been a splendid opportunity to pull him to bits especially with the whole room with you to help. I’ve never heard such infernal lip as his. All quiet here though wet & inclined to be cold. I hope you see the Daily Telegraph now. After a long course of the Times & happened to get on to a copy of the D. T. the other day & found quite by chance that it is not a fact that the Bosch is having everything his own way. It was most inspiring & I continue to read it nightly. One of our subalterns, Fellowes, was wounded yesterday fairly slightly I think. He came with Charlie Cressy & two others from Middlesex & were a very good quartette & now we’ve only got one of them left. We clear out to-night for a spell & go back for an
unutterably boring existence for [illegible] several days to a place where there is even less doing than here.
The guns had a big shoot on a farm opposite us yesterday. I think it was a sort of small fort, but they laid it out in fine style – not that there was much to lay out, but what there was has now ceased to be. The Bosch set to work on us in retaliation but beyond covering the place with mud & spraining one man’s ankle by knocking in the parapet on to him, no damage was done at all. I am writing to Gladys by this post.
Love to all
Jack.
P. S. I wonder if Foster & Lewis did really mix their metaphors in the way Cecily says. It must have been priceless. Do send me any cutting out of the local papers about it.