Letters From the Front

Dated: December 3, 1915

Letter from Pte Angus McLean
Dear Frank:-Just a few lines in answer to your very welcome letter and believe me I was glad to hear you were all well and everything going smooth. The old town seems to be in the same place yet. If any person takes a notion to move it let me know as soon as possible because I want to find it as soon as I get through here, I seen a few towns since I left but the banks of the Wabi look good to me.
Well Frank, things are about the same here as usual. Nothing very startling for these parts. We are still holding our own here and I don't think there are enough Germ-Huns left to take it away from us.
Well Frank I wish you could see us here now “in our little dugout in the trench.” It sure is some life. We very often use that saying of ours “dig you son-of-a-gun dig” when the Jack Johnstons come close to us. That is one time we are thankful for the trench. We do our own cooking so you are lucky that your chickens are over there and not here. There are not many chickens around here, I have only had two since I came out. I got them on a foggy morning about a month ago. I heard the old rooster crowing when I was on sentry in the front line of trenches watching for Germ-Huns and I said you won't crow there to-morrow morning and he didn't either. I would have taken more but they were not there so I was satisfied with two. It made me think of the firehall feasts, but I suppose we will get more of them when we get back. What do you think, eh? Say the guys can sure make some noise when they get started with those guns and they are going some now.
So Dr. Fisher is coming out here. Well I suppose they need a few surgeons here and he is as good a man as they could get. I will be going to England on leave some time in January and if he is out here then I will try to look him up. I haven't had a chance to see Capt. Robinson since the first week we were here. We saw Tom Faught often and Claude Kennedy once in a while. Tell Bob it serves him right for cutting his foot. He is always trying to get a stand in with the cook. Tell him I am sorry just the same. He won't know whether I am or not. I wrote to Fred yesterday but I didn't have a chance to tell him about your chickens. Say I think you are real mean you wouldn't get those chickens until after I left. I don't get any buttermilk here but there are six cows in a field not so very far away but what I can walk over and get my mess tin full once in a while. I don't believe in stealing but anything is fair in love and war.
Well Frank this will be a wonderful country after the war. There are towns and cities here that look more like an old deserted brick yard than anything. There are farmers here living within easy reach of the enemy's guns. Sometimes you would wonder why they stay and take the chance but it must be hard for them to leave everything they own behind and have no place to go. They are good farmers here. They are old fashioned though and do everything slow but what they do they do it right. They had a good crop this year. The land is just about the same as Temiskaming but there is no bush at all but there are hedges running here, there and all over. It has been a nice country but it is blown to pieces around here now. There is a city not far from here that will be a great sight for years to come, the city of Ypres. It is nearly all laid flat. If you remember that is the place the Canadians made their name.
I finished my course in bomb throwing but they have not sent me over to England yet. I suppose they will keep me over there when I go on leave. Well Frank I guess I will have to cut this short now as this is the last sheet of paper you will have to be satisfied with these few lines. Of course you know how it is I had to write to a couple of girls (what does that word mean) and that takes a lot of paper.