Letters From the Front

Dated:

The Homemakers Club and Red Cross of Riverfield sent $100 to Dr. Elder, who, under date Dec. 29, makes this acknowledgment:

To Mrs. E. McKell, secretary-treasurer

Dear Madam:

Your check for one hundred dollars was received by me just in time for Christmas, and I added it to the fund which was subscribed by friends in Montréal and the townships for giving the patients and personnel in this unit a special dinner on Christmas Day. I thought that this was the most useful way of spending your very generous gift. Please accept and convey to all those associated with you in sending this donation, my very sincere thanks on behalf of the patients and all the personnel of the hospital. I am enclosing an account of our Christmas Day, which may be of interest to you for publication, in order to let the members of your society know that we did our very best, helped by our good friends far away in Canada, to give everyone in hospital a happy time. I am,

Yours very truly,

J. M. Elder

Christmas Day at No. 3 Canadian General Hospital

We today celebrated our third successive Xmas Day in France and everyone unites in saying it was probably the most successful of the three. Our first Christmas was at Camiers in 1915. Our beautiful Indian Durbar[1] had been blown down in November, and the hospital was out of commission and with no patients on Christmas Day, but we were not downhearted, and we managed to have a Christmas celebration for the officers, nursing sisters, and personnel. Our next Christmas, last year was spent here in Boulogne. We had prepared to feed 1200 patients, but the night before a convoy of about 200 wounded was received, consequently the dinners for the patients were not as plentiful as they would otherwise have been.

This year we said in the wards 1300 patients. The personnel numbering 252 sat down together at noon in the recreation hut generously provided for this unit by the Canadian Red Cross Society and in the evening in the same hut, the officers and nursing sisters to the number of 160 all dined together. The unit orchestra furnished delightful music during all these meals. Everyone had an excellent dinner consisting of turkey, plum pudding or mince pie, desert of nuts, raisins, oranges, etc., and in addition, to every man who could smoke was given some cigarettes or tobacco. Every man in the unit was also given a warm pair of socks.