Somewhere else in France
Aug 23rd
Dear May,
It’s twelve months today since we set out for Trentham. Looking back it seems no time since I was in the old shop & yet such a lot seems to have happened since. There have been times when a few minutes have seemed like as many months, cold wet miserable nights that took an age to crawl past. Egypt alone seems to have occupied a lifetime, and yet it has all been squeezed into one year – a year full of interesting & exciting experiences & nothing but the
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best of luck. I have never yet paraded sick & have never felt the least bit “out of sorts” (excepting of course the first few days on the Willochra), and at present I am rather heavier than when I left home. If I have as good a time for the next twelve months I’ll be satisfied. The show will probably be over before then & we won’t be sorry. They can wind it up as soon as they like, but I want a week or two in England before we go home. People in N.Z seem to have an idea that it is a simple matter for us to go over & have a tour round England. Some of my correspodants suppose that I have been there &
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others advise me to go, as if advice were necessary. As matter of fact there is a picket stationed on every road & we can’t go more than about 200 yds without getting pulled up & turned back & it is the hardest thing in the world to get a pass to go into the next village about a mile away, for bread or groceries. Anything beyond that is hopeless. It is true that for a week or two after we arrived in France they were letting a few go to England for 8 days but the percentage was so small that it would have taken about 3 years for us all to have got a trip. However the scheme was soon knocked on the head & since then there has been no leave at all.
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Perhaps it is not fair to expect it, but it is equally unfair for Jimmy Allen to announce from the platform that we can get leave to England when our only possible way of getting there is on a Hosp. train. Beats me where they get their “news” from. Some of them would make a fortune if they could work their way into the German “Official News” office. At present we are well back from the firing line & out of reach of minniewerfers, whiz bangs pineapples etc. Our first billet was a lovely little country place with very nice people but we only stayed 5 days there & moved round a bit finishing up with
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a 4 ½ hours night march with full packs & blankets. Here we are in a small village where we can buy nothing & go nowhere. It is a very old & dirty show & the people seem hard up, but I don’t suppose we will be here long. This is a great district for apples there are acres & acres of them & avenues of them along the roads, unfortunately they are not quite ripe enough. Hargest & Bagrie are still with me, & we expect to see their namesake soon. I don’t know if I told you that Jim Hargest is in our battalion. He has been promoted [censored]. Have not heard from you for 5 weeks now. The mail arrives fairly regularly every fortnight. Last mail I got a few letters but none from home & this mail I got nothing at all. I suppose they will all come in a bundle one of these days.
Love to all
Len
OVER.
[Written on back of Page 5]
26th P.S. Your letter No 10 of June 26th arrived today. Cris Millar has just joined up & is attached to our Coy.