6 December 1915 Somewhere in France

An incomplete letter to his mother in Teeswater.  

Dear Mother,  

Received your letter of December 12 yesterday and as usual was very glad to hear that everyone was okay. I guess you would be so busy at Christmas time that you could hardly turn around. I see that you expected your usual crowd at Christmas.  

I got your parcel with Ettie’s, Mrs. Nixon’s, Mrs. Calvin’s and Mrs. Hughes’ contributions but failed to find your own. In its stead was a note from the postal authorities to the effect that, as the enclosed parcel of potted chicken was in a high-state of decomposition, it had been removed and destroyed and the remaining part of the former parcel repacked. So I guess it is not practicable to send stuff like that so far. Everything else was in good condition and I must write to them all and thank them. I have written to Mrs. Nixon and will drop a line to the others to as soon as I can.  

We are at the Château yet but expect will be leaving in another 10 days or so for our D.R.S. I don't know for sure just how long we will be there but I guess it will be a month at least and from there we will go on to our dressing station where we were last.  

Yes, we have been seeing quite a bit about Ford's peace expedition but I am afraid it is not going to be of much value. Oh yes, it was our own hospital that we were building the sandbag barricade for. It is not sand we put in the bags, only earth or anything else like that, that we can get.

Since we left our advanced dressing station there has been quite a bit of artillery firing around there and on one occasion two or three days after I had been sent on to our D.R.S., the village got quite a drubbing from the German artillery and the hospital handled 18 casualties in the afternoon. Our men got off okay and there were none hurt at all. I understand that since that bombardment (these were about 100 shells thrown over) there is a big dugout being built (bombproof) for the patients from the hospital to be carried to in case of a bombardment (say excuse this mixed up composition but I am writing this at the desk and people are continually…