[04/09/1915]
Gore Trentham
Sat. 4th
Dear May
Your letter arrived yesterday & I was glad to hear from you, as it seems a long time since I left Wside. We are getting on famously here. We have had our rifles issued & also our uniforms & last night Hargest & I went to Well. I wrote May when we came into camp & got a letter back asking me to let her know when I was coming in & she would meet me but as it was the 1st night leave was granted I wasn’t sure of getting it until the last minute. As it was we put in a good night in the city & caught the 11 train home. They have their Sat. night on Friday now. I bought a developing tank for my films & tonight I developed a spool & am well pleased with all of them, will enclose proofs if they are dry in time. Bagrie has also invested in one, & our corporal has taken a fancy to it & is going in for one too so the 3 of us going partners in the dev. outfit. If I could find some means of turning out
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the p’ts I could do fairly well out of it as every one wants them. I was rather surprised to see by your letter that your medicine gives me a hummer appetite. Certainly my appetite is great but it is difficult to see the connection between the cause and effect. Evidently you are receiving some benefit too. I received a letter from the Sec. of the Gore Defence Committee yesterday asking me to look up the nine men from Gore & let him know what we required in the way of outfits. I saw them all & they were pretty much amused & some of them were pretty strong in their remarks & reckoned if they had intended doing anything they should have started before we had been a week or more in camp. Well I wrote back thanking his committee for their kind offer but told him that we had been handsomely treated all the way up the line & most of us had had all we required given to us & those who had not had procured the balance of their equipment since coming to camp. I made it pretty polite but tried to embody the feeling of the
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men. Well what I want you to do is watch the paper for a report of their meeting & send me anything that might be of interest. I would just like to know how they take it. Well I am in a bit of a hurry so will stop. Am too late for tonights mail so might get a line or two written tomorrow but our company is on duty all day so I don’t expect much time. Sunday. Our fatigue duty didn’t turn out as bad as we expected today. We were all told off to different work & were not to be dismissed until 12. The work consisted of cleaning out the officers rooms, helping to tidy up the camp generally & unloading provisions. The was enough work to keep 15 or 20 men going for 1/2 a day but they put about 360 of us onto it so we had an easy time. I was one of 4 set apart to load stores. We started at 8.30 by laying two or 3 sleepers along a tarpaulin to keep it down then the corporal told us to get behind some straw – & make ourselves comfortable as we wouldn’t be required until 10 o’clock when we would had to load potatoes & chaff for the artillery.
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We lay down for a spell before we started our job but when the job arrived all we had to do was to lift 8 bags of potatoes & 4 bags of chaff onto a waggon. We lay down again until 1/4 to 12 when we unloaded 5 cans of milk, & were then dismissed for the day. I had hoped to do a bit of washing & photography but it has turned out very wet & has been raining hard all afternoon. However I have heaps of writing to do to so I can easily fill in the time. We are all keeping well & are feeling very fit. The open air & regular hours are doing us a lot of good. There is very little sickness now – chiefly colds. Meningitis has been off for a long time & there have been no measles for over a week. Paddy Doraman is over in the Ambulance Dept. He is on the Army Service corp driving stores from the station. Think this is about all the news.
Love to all
From
Len
What “scraps” did you refer to. L. Proofs enclosed – particulars on backs.
