6 / 6 / 1915
Dear Andrew,
Yours 2 / 6 / 1915 received. Am very pleased you are back flying again. I have seen dozens of aeroplanes many many thousand feet high with shells [ours white, Germans black] bursting all around them and one chasing another and it is quite interesting. We have got all our wagons and horses under cover and are continually on the look out for them. Our division has been in action just a little and we have had to send up one or two wagons every day but on the whole we have had very little to do so far. Perhaps you remember Fowler, a rather short fellow with fair hair whom I introduced to you on Euston station platform the day I left for ********. He was in B Battery of the same brigade I was in. He went out as forward observing officer and instead of staying in his dug out he got up and helped the infantry mend some wire entanglements and got shot in the thigh I believe, and bled to death. The BGC has already sent up an officer to replace him and one column has sent up a man to the BAC. I received a very nice letter from Miss ******** who is going to make me a pair of socks and received a nice parcel from Miss ******** with all sorts of good things in it including a pair of socks. I must write some more letters so cheer O. And come out here as quickly as possible – things are going on none too well as far as I can see.
Your aff. brother, John
22 / 6 / 1915
Dear Violet,
I am comfortably seated between two big wagons with a big tarpaulin [cover] stretched across forming a tent. It is blazing hot. I have just inspected the rifles of my section and they are now cleaning harness. We are at camp. The whole division is about 20 miles behind the firing line. We got here yesterday. As a matter of fact our artillery have been doing very little since we arrived in –. But I believe our infantry got it pretty hot. We think we are going to a very hot place in a day or two and so are enjoying ourselves while we can. I am as you know in the Brigade for ******** now and like it very much, but I had a great sorrow the other day. I have to give up my horse Tommy to my great regret. I tried to have him transferred but my former captain behaved like a beast and refused to take another horse in exchange. So I had to give him up. I have got a new job to occupy my spare hours. The army service corps which feeds us and our animals cannot get enough hay for our horses and mules and so we are allowed to go and buy stuff ourselves. So as I know French I naturally have to go foraging all over the place buying 200 kilos of hay and another 500 of beet root etc. It is quite interesting but takes up a lot of time. We have all our own meals outside now and I am writing to you outside at present [8.30pm]. I received a letter today from Andrew who says that he is off to the Dardanelles. He has got an appointment as military observer to the R Naval Flying Corps. He is going off at any minute but doesn’t know when he is leaving. It is too dark to write anymore and so I shall stop.
Love to father and Lilian,
your ever aff. brother Johnny.
(When my Uncle Andrew told me a bit about the Dardenelles cmpaign I particularly remember that he said he had been shot down in the sea and found himself sinking, caught up in the wreckage. He said that he reckoned he had died but came to as he was being taken aboard a motor launch. David)
[scribbled in pencil at bottom of letter: Please send on to Steve when read. Will write to you tomorrow. Am delighted to know that you have settled with an old friend and I am sure you will do all you can in managing the farm. I am going to the Station to see Violet and Lilian off – they will have a 400 mile journey. Much love, your affect. fath]
5 / 7 / 1915
My dear sister,
I hope this letter will find you somewhere high up in the Catskill Mountains having a jolly good rest and enjoying yourself as much as you possibly can. I received your letter of June 16th two days ago and was very sorry to see that several of your letters had been lost. Have you ever received my telegram from Southampton and my long letter, the first one written after I had left England which I wrote in bits? Yours was the first letter in which you know I have left England. My new address is 48th Brigade, RFA, 14th Division, B.E.F. France so I shall not repeat anymore. Please take a note of it. We have been up to the firing line again for a week but as they haven’t room up there for us we have been sent back to rest camp and I don’t know how long we shall remain here. We are quite comfortable in a very nice shady field. I am again between two wagons and have just told my servant that I want a hot bath at 7.30 to night in my little canvas tub! We are having glorious weather and as we are in rest camp very little to do. One of us officers is orderly officer every day [in turn] and he does most of the work. The others take it easy. Today I was not, so I went into –, a fair sized town about the nearest still populated town to the firing line and bought some Quaker oats macaroni, 2 cauliflowers and some red currants. I bought some beautiful strawberries the other day but paid 1 franc 50 cent a lb! I bought those within two miles of the trenches and there was hardly a soul left in the place. I am buying postcards of the different places but of course it is impossible to send them to you. I hope to be able to keep them until I go back to England.
While I am writing to you I am eating some very good toffee which the Walkers [the people Andrew stayed with at Merstham] have sent me. I had also had had socks sent to me [which I don’t really need] by other friends of Andrew’s. I wrote to Mr. Baer to send me some chocolate for which I of course was going to pay; have just received a letter from him saying he is sending me out a parcel and hopes I will accept it as a present. The food we get is all right but the trouble is that we get no vegetables and no fruit and we have great difficulty in getting any. I go around the country hunting for them and buying up all I can for the men and for ourselves but it is very difficult. We are allowed to spend so much money every day on this, and this is because the people who feed us can’t get it them themselves. I shall go hunting around the country presently and see the mayors of the different villages to see if I can’t buy some potatoes or carrots. I have at least got hold of Uncle ********’s address [not his whereabouts] and have written to him at once and hope to receive a reply. I am sending this letter to Father so that he can forward it to you at once. I do hope Father has not stayed at 34 Plaza all the summer as it would be really too lonely.
There is an aeroplane camp, a French one, I believe, quite near here and I passed the other night about 7.30 and saw all the aeroplanes coming down one after another from all directions just like birds coming to rest; it was a very pretty sight I tell you. That day as it happened I went 15 miles with 2 wagons to get 1100 kilos of grass which I had cut in front of me. I must stop now and get tea. Love to everybody and thanks for your long letter. Write again soon,
Your ever affectionate brother,
John
August 5th, 1915
Dear Father,
I am still alive but have been through hell the last few days. Was without sleep for 3 days and 2 nights and was under shell fire for the first time. Worked like blazes carrying ammunition up to the guns day and night. One shell fell right in front of me and covered me with dust. I have been up to – about 12 times, most often at a trot the whole way. It is raining now and I have to make the best of a ground sheet and a few sacks put together with a few bits of wood and string and it is not watertight by any means. I have to go up to – to night again but things are quieter. We have lost very heavily, all in our division, which was holding the place the Germans attacked. If you receive Field postcard you will know it means I haven’t time to write. I have had no news from Andrew yet but am not surprised as it takes an awful long time. Received a letter from Violet from her camp. Your ever aff son, John
September 2nd, 19xx [Ed.: date not legible in letter, but presumed to be 1915]
Dear Violet,
I have just received your letter of the 18th August and it is such a nice long letter that I feel I really must answer it. I am writing in my little bivouac on an improvised table and have unfortunately got a bad cold, which I caught one night getting very wet; however I am over the worst and hope to be all right again in a day or so. I received at the same time with your letter one from Miss ********, Mrs Tydd, Andrew and a small parcel from Mr ********. I suppose you are back in New York again by now. Thanks awfully for your nice long letter. Cheer up old girl. It is a jolly good thing that you are so far away as all this war is awful and I wouldn’t want you to be here.
As I write I can hear the rifle fire from the trenches about 6 miles away, and occasionally the guns which some of them are quite near go off and make big noises and little noises. Sometimes we have the French firing and then we all wish they would advance so that we could push on too. Every now and then I go up to the firing line and sometimes get into the thick of it, but lately things have been very quiet. However we hope to have another big attack before the winter starts. I suppose by now you will have received some of Andrew’s letters which I have forwarded to you. I am sending you on another one, a rather sorrowful one. Don’t let it worry you however. Andrew has got one of the safest jobs comparatively speaking that there is in this war as there have been the fewest number proportionately of casualties in the Flying Corps. He has also got one of the most interesting jobs. I am pleased you wrote to Peggy ********. She told me about your card in her letter yesterday. She is a very great friend of Andrew’s and it is thanks to him I know her. I may get a few days’ leave before Xmas if I am lucky. Leave for our division has started this month. I received an awfully nice long letter from Madeleine yesterday which I am answering. It is very nice to receive letters, but under the conditions we are in it is hard to answer them all. Don’t be surprised later on when the weather gets bad and the work harder if you only receive Field Post cards. Poor Mrs Tydd writes to me in despair, saying she is not going to send me and more parcels as I don’t receive them! It is very peculiar how some people’s parcels never arrive and the only way I can explain is that some person outside collars them. I have heard of several cases of people’s saying their parcels never arrive. Kind regards to Martha to Oz and Mrs ******** and to Bee. Love to father and Lilian. Don’t worry too much about the future. This war isn’t over yet by any means.
Best love from your ever aff. brother, John.
Oct 25th, 1915
Dear Violet,
At last I have time to answer all your nice long letters. You must not think because I always write to Father that I do not appreciate yours. It has been raining all day today and with it a piercing cold wind shrieking through the trees the whole time. I had no gloves and consequently felt very cold. Although I had a mack on all day the lower part of my breeches from the knees downward are wet although I managed to keep my feet fairly dry with gum boots. After lunch I went out on my little horse for a ride to go up to the engineers and I hadn’t left camp a few hundred yards when my cap blew off. As I hadn’t been out yesterday Sunday he was a bit fresh. So I had to come back, dismount, pick it up, all muddy of course, and get on again. I didn’t half say something!! My little horse’s name is Plug. I don’t know who named him that, but that is his name. He is rather small, with broad ugly shoulders and a thick set neck. He is a good little trotter and loves to canter but his only fault is that he stumbles. However he is a very comfortable ride and works very well. I am out on him nearly every day. It is very seldom he doesn’t do 5 or 6 miles with me and pretty often it is more like 16. He is rather lazy and much prefers to canter. He does not like to trot although he can do so very well if he chooses.
Our divisional administration column who haven’t much to do and who are about 5 miles behind us organised a real paper chase two weeks ago Sunday, and I and another officer Eastwood (was also two years in New York with Jardine Matheson and Co.) went down to take part in it. Of course there were only officers. All sorts of nice horses, some really fine ones. I of course thought, on my poor little horse, I couldn’t be able to keep up long. At 5pm the two hares went off at a gallop leaving a trail behind. Exactly 10 minutes afterwards the start was given. Altogether we were about 50. We went like hell, I can tell you. It was great fun, over countless ditches, through woods and over cornfields etc. Several officers got knocked off one way and another. One, a very good rider, got thrown headlong into a small river. The adjutant of the D.A.C. broke one of his fingers. I had a very narrow escape. I was going headlong behind another officer. The trail led along a hop field. He tried to make…..
December 15, 1915
Dear Violet,
As I write the gramophone is going and every few minutes I have to get up and change the records and wind it up. It has had the usual effect on me when I listen to any beautiful music of making me a little homesick and I hasten to answer your nice long letter of November 26th received yesterday. In the future, please do not put 14th Division on your letters, only B/48th Brigade R.F.A. as the censor objects to the Division and always delays your letters consequently.
Let me try and picture to you where I am. Our battery position is somewhere in –. For miles around us the country is perfectly flat, nothing but ruined towns and villages. Not a house around for miles which has not been destroyed or knocked about. I am writing to you seated in front of an old chimney in what must have been some middle class farmer’s little cottage and a roaring wood fire is burning. It is practically the only pleasure and extravagance we can indulge in as wood is plentiful. We only have to go a few yards and knock down any old shanty etc for wood. During the daytime we shiver as no fires are allowed as the Hun aeroplanes could see the smoke and we should then get shelled badly. It is very cold just now, but this is much nicer than rain, although it is difficult to keep warm.
For the second time in three days the Huns have dropped a shell so near our mess that all the window panes were smashed in the whole house. Glass is very scarce around here as you can well imagine. On Sunday one of our officers, a new one who had only just joined us got wounded badly just in front of the door. The Huns were beginning to put quite a few shells over the place, and so he went out to retire to a dug-out when a shell fell about 15 yards away, making a hold about 2 ft. deep and 7 ft. in diameter, and he was hit in both legs, one piece going right through his left knee. I was with the battery [quite near] and got two men and a stretcher and went to him and brought him to a fairly safe dug-out. I got hold of the doctor pretty quickly and he came out at once and afterwards he went off to the ambulance. The next day he was in England. Poor fellow, he is finished for the war anyhow. Yesterday they dropped a bigger one still, within three yards of our mess and this is quite an ordinary occurrence. One gets quite used to these things and everybody takes his chance. Nobody likes it and everybody takes jolly good care to get under cover when it is possible, and of course, when one has not got to do something else. At present I am sleeping in a bedroom in a real bed, which comes from – and I am quite comfortable; but as all the windows are broken and a bit of the roof knocked in it is rather draughty. In the last position we all slept in a cellar which had about 10 ft. of sand-bags and bricks on top of it, but here we have nothing as the place is pretty safe. Before this letter reaches you I shall have moved to a place which will probably be somewhere near Andrew. I don’t know myself and couldn’t tell you anyhow if I did. If I am lucky I may be able to see him during the next few months. [Ed.: written in pen in the margin: “we know now that he is going to stay in France”] I was up at out O.P. for two days on end. Our O.P. is a place near the trenches from which we can see the Hun trenches and all the ground behind very well with glasses or a telescope. It is quite interesting work and when our battery fires you can see quite well where the shells fall and correct their line and range etc. Everything of course is connected up by telephone and these of course often get broken and the signallers [telephonists] have to go out and mend them. They have one of the most dangerous jobs in this war.
It is very funny how we always use the word “strafe”. Now we never talk about getting shelled, or wounded. It is always “so and so got strafed yesterday,” or “the Huns strafed us yesterday.” I am afraid it is little or no use you sending me any parcels at all as I don’t think I shall ever receive them. I have never yet received your first parcel, and don’t suppose I ever shall. I am sure not half my letters arrive as I write to you very often, as much as two letters a week, and you might keep a record of the dates you write to me as I always acknowledge all your letters, and in this way you could know if any get lost. I am afraid the censor stops a lot of my letters. If you don’t hear from me for two or three weeks after this you know why, so don’t be anxious. I have as a matter of fact much too much clothing as I bought quite a lot when I was on leave and had a lot of stuff given me by different friends, and now I have to send most of it back to England. If you want to send me anything the best thing is for you to write to some friends in England and tell them to send me out something, food and cigarettes etc. I smoke very seldom and have not yet got to like it. It gives me no pleasure but I occasionally smoke one. However if you send me any through friends as I suggested I could give them to my men.
Your affectionate brother, John
December 21, 1915
Dear Father,
Somehow or other it is always when I am feeling rather sad and homesick, and sick of the war, that I start writing to you. This time I should not feel anything but merry as I have been royally spoilt by various people with parcels right and left.
But I have just read a letter from Beckton, a fellow officer of our battery who got wounded last Sunday week, about whom I wrote Violet in my last letter. He writes that they have taken one of his legs off. Poor fellow, it is terribly rotten for him and I feel awfully sorry for him, especially as he had been a private and in the trenches for a whole year before going through all last winter without a scratch, and now this –.
The Walkers [the people Andrew stayed with at Merstham and whom I went to see of course while I was on leave] sent me two lovely parcels today, cakes, puddings, sweets and all sorts of lovely things, and yesterday I got two parcels from Mrs Blyth of Godalming, and Mrs Tydd has sent me some books. I wish people would put their names on their parcels. Some unknown person sent me some toffee. By the way, I received your book called the Shuttle for which many thanks, but I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you I don’t like it and am not going to finish it. You perhaps don’t know that it is a book in which the Americans are everybody and heroes, and all the English are rotten and degenerate. I read about 20 pages, and every page is full of the absolute nastiest things about English peers and society, and only praise for the Americans. As you can well realize, we need anything but that when one sees dead or wounded every day, and all for what? For our country. One has to have a lot of patriotism to keep going. Don’t believe for one minute that we are downhearted. It is perfectly marvellous to me how the men write cheery letters to their people. Never a murmur or a word about the hardships they are going through. Their only worry is that their people at home should get downhearted. You will be pleased to hear that we are leaving this part of the world and I shall soon be fairly near Andrew. Everybody is delighted, as this part of the line is pretty rotten. You can always find out from Mrs R whereabouts I am. Must stop now as I still want to write another letter before turning in. I am living in a tent now. I dare say we shall be on the march for a few days in a few days. Love to Violet and Lilian. Please let me know you got this letter.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all and to all friends, Your ever affectionate son, John
January 22, 1916
Dear Violet,
I feel quite a naughty boy for not writing before, as I have now received three letters from you and Father, without answering them. You do write lovely letters, Violet, and you don’t know how I enjoy reading them. Today I received yours of the 2nd – never answered Father’s of December 23rd. I never wrote to Helen I was going to Serbia, just like her to say it. I said was a hot place. It was Egypt as a matter of fact, but as you know by now it is all off. You mustn’t worry too much about me as I am quite all right and very comfortable just now. We mess in an old farm house and sleep in a very strong dug-out quite safe. Our present position is the best we have had since we came out. I have been up at our O.P. [Observation Post] a dug-out quite near the trenches from which I looked at the Hun trenches all day and directed the fire of our battery by telephone. It is very interesting, only a little lonesome, as I had to leave here before 6.30am and only got back about 5pm. You see we have to get there before dawn so that the Boche can’t see us.I am awfully glad to hear that Peggy wrote you. She is an awfully nice girl, and I often write to her. She is a great friend of Andrew’s.
I do hope that your birds will be successful in having little chicks. This letter has been waiting now for two days.
I went up last night with a party of men making a new dug-out quite near the Hun trenches and only came back at 2am. I have been up three night now and am going up again tonight. It is pretty hard work and the bullets are a nuisance, as they make you jump.
Andrew has been at Alexandria for a week’s leave, and he hopes to come back home soon. I hope he will.
Best love to Father and Lilian, and many thanks for all your letters,
Your affectionate brother, John
PS. Have received a letter from Stephen and from my friend in Philadelphia. Will answer both when I have time.
March 31, 1916
Dear Father,
I feel I really must write you as it is ages since I have written home. However it is 10.30pm and I am half asleep. I have been up at the O.P. Observation station for 24 hours and the day before I rode down to our wagon lines eight miles away to receive Sir Douglas Hay and Kitchener who were coming to see our horses, but unfortunately at the last minute they did not come.
If the boats are running next Tuesday I go on leave for a whole week. I am afraid, however, that as all boats are stopped I shan’t be able to go – just my luck. If I go, I shall again stay with Mrs Roehrich.
Have just heard from Andrew. He is just leaving ………. for a month’s course at the Central Flying School at Upavon, Wilts. I hope to see him as much as possible while on leave. I have just received the case of groceries which Mrs R sent me nearly two months ago for you. Thanks awfully – it was quite a success, all sorts of tinned stuff and a fine cake.
I have received a very nice letter from Mrs Matzingen in answer to mine.
We have been having awful weather, snow, rain and nasty cold weather, but it has been lovely spring weather the last three days. We have not had much of the gale they had in England. I do hope I shall be as lucky with the weather in England as I was last time.
I had one of my gunners killed a week ago by an explosion which took place down at the wagon lines, and I had to go down to the burial and it was pretty rotten as he was absolutely blown to pieces.
The gramophone is going strong while I am writing, and chasing all my thoughts away. I wonder if you ever have yours going and what kind of records you have. I suppose all rag times. We have some awfully nice ones.
Love to Violet and Lilian,
Your ever affectionate son, John