To his sister Margaret Layzell
20th Nov/16 [1916]
6th Lond. Fd. Ambulance [Ypres Salient]
Dearest old Marge:
A first word of greeting. I suppose you get news of me from home.
The last I heard of you was that you were well on Oct 15 & that Stanley was
at Dar-es-Salaam. Good luck to you both & may you not be tempted to come
back to this detestable continent till all is over. I have written to you
shamefully little, but my thoughts go often youwards & I never miss a
B.E.A. – or rather G.E.A. paragraph in the papers. Of course we are rather
expecting soon to see that the Bosch has had a coup de grace in that region
anyhow; but we are old & wise now here & not over-sanguinely expectant
about anything. – I am well; though I had a spell in hospital some three
weeks ago with (I think) lumbago. At the moment I am at a Dressing Station
near the trenches. Things are fairly quiet. The place is marshy, & we
live in a hole in an old railway embankment. Wet weather gives me twinges
in joints & muscles that I knew of never before! but after all that is a
small penalty.
I have had lively accounts from home of the visit of your Pathan
friend – who made a sensation second only to Count Fleury's famous
week-end in our modest abode. Mary has had a holiday in London with Jo, &
has been good in writing to me. We are as voracious for letters here as
you, I guess. When things are quiet the post is wonderfully regular. Your
letters come up daily with the rations; likewise newspapers, – yesty's
London papers arrive here today. The combination of civilisation &
savagery in this most desolate scene is curious. – Every house bashed out
of recognition (some of them are mere heaps of rubble with grass growing
over); acres of rough cemeteries; trees lopped by shell-fire. But there is
electric light in some dug-outs. Telephone communication all over the place
of course.
We are a small party here, & our work is chiefly done at night: – by day
you look over the countryside without seeing a trace of a living thing.
Looking back a year (we were at Loos then), I remember we thought it
impossible that things could go on like this till now. And two years
ago! – Anyhow we resign ourselves, & feel grateful for the comparative
respite of a quiet part of the line. You will have heard that we had a
stiff time in the Somme in Sept. & Oct.
Goodbye, my dear girl. My greetings to Stanley. Richard