Letters From the Front

Dated: June 6, 1915

I must send you a few lines to let you know that I am O.K. and that the Huns have not got me yet. We have been out here a month now and have had our 'baptism of fire' for four days, as the casualty lists will have shown. I could write much about those four days, but the censor would not like it, perhaps.

It is really extraordinary how small the world is. In a square mile of Flanders, several weeks ago, I met practically all the fellows I knew in the first contingent from Brandon and other places. They all got through the Ypres affair, and through this last one too, as I have seen them continually since. Glasgow, who came out about two weeks before me, I have seen several times. From what I gathered he had some very close shaves in this last affair; his battalion suffered very heavily.

We have just had a church parade, but it was a very extra­ordinary one on account of the possibility of a shell interrupting the service.

My brother and I had quite an interesting experience the other night. We went for a stroll into an adjacent village into which the Huns dropped a few shells every evening about 7 o'clock, but of that fact we were unaware. We had just come out of a little 'Estaminet' at the corner of the square and had gone about fifteen yards up the street when, biff! one came about thirty yards behind us. I must confess I was more scared than at any time in the trenches, it was so unexpected, and the yapping women and old fogies quite unnerved me. About thirty seconds later another one came, this time much nearer, glass, etc, fell all around me; an old chap standing near me got his cheek cut and the toe of his slipper, but I wasn't even scratched. If my brother had accepted my offer of another drink in that little pub (which if you knew my brother you would think most probable) we should just have been about coming out of the door and the tale would run differently. So in future when we curse this awful stuff they sell as beer out here we must remember it once did us a good turn.