Letters From the Front

Dated: November 1, 1916

Mr. H. J. Snell writes:

Canadian Ordnance Corps, Ashford, Kent, England.
November 1st, 1916

I am now with the above Corps and like it much better than the work I was doing in the 89th Batt.  In fact, while I was in England with them, I was in charge of fatigue parties and doing police duty, etc., and had very little prospect of going over to France with my own country, so as soon as I found they were going to send us across in drafts, I got transferred to the Ordnance corps, and am at present in the orderly room and I like the work very much.  We have been very busy lately sending a lot of armourers away.  This is the head depot here and all the stuff, such as clothing, wagons, harness, stretchers, hospital supplies, rifles, etc., all pass through here, and it is simply wonderful, the amount of goods that is shipped away.  This is a very important branch of the service, and of course, as times go on, it will get larger.  I like my work here and expect to be here until afer Christmas, when I hope to be able to get across to France.

There is a very nice church here turned into a Red Cross hospital so we see lots of the results of the war on the streets and it is a very pitiful sight to see so many poor fellows crippled or hurt for the remainder of their lives.  We have a great many boys in the Ordnance who have done their bit at the front and have been passed as unfit for further service over there.  The ladies of this country are working very hard for the"Tommies".   At every large railway station there are free lunch counters for soldiers travelling and they visit the hospitals to see if anything possible is done to try and make the life of a soldier more pleasant. 

There are about 6,000 Imperial troops billeted here for the winter so what with our own men there are lots of soldiers around.  This is much better for the men to be billeted as they do get a good dry bed to sleep in.  The British Government pay the people sixpence (12 cents) for the first soldier and fourpence (8 cents) for the second per night, so you see the people do not make any fortune out of it.