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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