Transcription
27. 8. 1916.
My dear Father,
Many thanks for paying the car premium for which I enclose my cheque. Also thanks to Mother & Cecily for letters. When & where are you going for your holiday? C. says you won’t take the pram & I suppose she wouldn’t be much good as there is not enough juice to do any runs, when you have got there, besides I suppose you would have to carry it with you, though I don’t know how the ticket system works.
We are in billets in a [illegible] village at the moment, crowded but dry which is a great blessing as the weather is inclined to be wet & our last place was a camp on the hillside with only 8 tents for the Battalion, so the men got rather wet. I pity those poor devils up in the trenches on the Somme as of course they cannot revet them & all
[page]
the trenches will be falling in & give no protection & the communication trenches will probably be impassable. However it will be the same for the Bosch only rather more so. I see they have been Zepping you lately, but I hope it was not near home & that they didn’t call you out every night for no reason. It is extraordinary what little damage they do for all the efforts they make. I suppose we shall bag one or two of them soon, which should make them think twice about coming over again. I might even go so far as to retaliate on Cologne or some such place.
In this particular place when we got in last night, we found it full of thousands of flies, which are nothing like so bad this
[page]
year as a rule. However by blowing a tin of Keatings in the air when we went to bed, we have killed practically the lot & the air is now practically free. This is quite a good tip & extraordinarily successful.
We have just got a wire that Roumania has come in against Austria, which is rather cheering & ought to prove the last straw.
Incidentally I have just been reading extracts from German Prisoners Diaries which show that they are having the very deuce of a time from our artillery & that they don’t like it at all. I wonder how they will appreciate the remainder of our guns when they arrive by next year.
Love to all
Jack.
Commentary