Trenches
31.7.16
Dear May,
I have just received your letter & mother’s, Nos 8 & 9. Am glad you got those p.c’s alright. It is a good job they went to Scotland first as they evidently held up the N.Z mail for some time for you to make no mention of having received a letter I posted several days before. Since then we have had orders that no picture p.c’s of France will pass the censor & we were told that all that had been posted were destroyed. Cameras are also forbidden here & to possess one is a courtmartial offence. It is a bit of hard luck. I had no difficulty in disposing of mine as you already know. Our first camp was about a mile from the souvenir town where I posted the p.c’s but we have done a lot of shifting about since then. Re the films that you say didn’t arrive from Egypt I am not sure that they were posted. I posted only one batch containing any canal views. I had some others that I said I would keep to take pts off & post later but I never posted them & the shell got them. I picked up some pieces of them in the wreckage, but they are just about settled.
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There is little news this week. We have had a long spell in the trenches this time & will not be sorry when the time comes to get out. I haven’t slept with my togs off for over five weeks. I am afraid it will seem a dreadful trouble to get up & dress in the mornings when we get out to the billets. Mark had a letter the other day from Duncan Moffitt saying that he was in Hospital with shrapnel wounds but is doing well. He gave no particulars. Bill Shelton also got a smack & will probably see no more of the war. A piece of shell case got him in the back muscles of the thigh. I think the bone is alright. Fancy the report of our march to the front being sent to N.Z. papers. Of course it is true that it was a good stiff march – about 15 miles on a hard road with full pack up – but what a fuss they make of it. We had plenty of harder days tramping the desert, but then it is not “marching to the front”. It is rather sickening the way they skite about any little success. They don’t seem to have mentioned that another brigade did the same trip a couple of days before & when the first men arrived the column was straggled over 7 miles
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of the road & the motor ambulances had a busy time bring in the weary & footsore. After a days rest they were sent back for further training & that is why we had to get into it. I suppose all these little items are calculated to help recruiting. I had a cutting from the Times about our coquettish hats charming the young French maidens. You’d laugh if you saw them, the hats I mean (& perhaps the majority of the maidens too). They are the same old slouch hats that we had in Egypt probably some have seen “Quinn’s & Courteney’s,” all of them have felt the fierceness of the desert sun & since then have been shoved into our pockets, tramped into our valise, & rolled up with our blankets but when we pull them over our knees to take out the creases, & go down the street you should just see how they charm the pretty madamoiselles – I don’t think. The same report mentioned the ‘furnished billets’, well I’ve seen a good few now & the only furniture I’ve seen was a pigs’ trough & a more or less disused hen roost. It is to be hoped that these rosey reports do some good – they certainly don’t help us in any very direct way.
Love to All. Len
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Received letter from you & May C, also your photo & a bundle of Ensigns. Sorry to hear of car accident. Hope they have all quite recovered. I enclose a few stamps for your collection.
