Letters from the trenches 1915

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.