Soldiers Club
Palmerston North
March 10th 1918
Dear Mary
I received your letter on Fri 1st Mar. the day after we came back from Featherston; you would probably get mine on the Sat. night. We didn’t know until within a week beforehand that we weren’t going away with the 35th Reinf’ts. This kind of information generally comes to us by way of rumours at first, and we dont whether to believe it or not. This is the first occasion since I have been in camp on which no section of the “Medical Corps” has gone away with a “Reinf’t. Draft”. of course, they seem to be cutting down the Drafts more & more as time goes on; the “Commandant” here has told someone that there wont be any more troops going away now for some time. I don’t know if that means that there wont be any leaving in April or not, anyway, we should have good chance now, of getting another “leave”. I haven’t heard yet if there is going to be any general leave at Easter or not apart from the 2 or 3 days which we are pretty sure to have in any
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case. I might see Kate yet before I go away. Last Mon. I got a “Wrislet Watch” sent me from the Glenham Patriotic Society. I can assure I have been able to appreciate it very much too, for I have been minus a Watch for a few weeks. I broke my own while over at Featherston & it would cost nearly the price of a good one to get it repaired again. If I had gone off on the Sat. I’m afraid it would have missed me; D. C. told me when I left them at Palmerston Sth. that they would be sending me something; they must have waited on expecting me to come down again. I suppose the leading-in will be “general” down there now. We have just had a lot of heavy easterly winds up this way with very little rain here, but flooded rivers on the east coast districts & the east coast of Queensland has been catching it extremely bad the result of Clement Wragge’s recent “Sun-Spots” I see by the “Southland Times” that Wattie Laurie had been killed on Dec. 3rd this is the first I have heard of it. There was a Gympkana held last Wed. on the Awapuni Racecourse. a fine day and
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a good crowd of people from the towns there were various Military events, and 3 motorcycle races = 5 mile, 10 mile, & 8 mile. the motor races seemed to attract the most interest. Coleman, who holds the Australasian Championship was competing, he seems to have no fear of death at all, for he went round the track like a Thunderbolt; but he was too heavily handicapped to win anything. They have got me into the Band again since I came back from Featherston. I thought they wouldn’t bother about me again for that, but, they seem to want to keep the Band going to its full strength they are going to try to get another Piper to fill my place. There was talk a while back about shifting this camp over to Featherston but that idea has fallen flat for the present at any rate, there are something over 300 men in camp here just now. I think the most I have seen & the main camp at Featherston is pretty full also. I will enclose Kate’s letter with this, I thought you might like to read it & perhaps Aggie and Jess may be visiting you shortly and they can read it also. I am going to write to Kate now to see if she has any idea when she will be over here; she may be away at Townsville by this time.
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Your affect.
Bro. J. Hall
