4106 Coy Battalion Div AIF

Sept 2nd (1916)

Dear Lil,

I have received 2 or 3 letters from you and do not think I have had the manners to answer any of them until now. I had a letter from you dated July 9th last. You should all have received letters from me as I have written dozens to those at home. I have sent one to Mother on every available opportunity but of course now that I am with the Battalion it often happens that a fortnight or so elapses before I can get a chance to write.

I have come out of the second turn of 7 days in the trenches safely and am now in a French town of some size waiting until the division gets fixed up for another fly somewhere else. I think I mentioned that I had 3 days in burying the dead. It wasn’t much of a job but I had to do it same as I have to do everything else I am ordered. One day we were in a ‘hashed’ village and came across a German dug out which had an entrance through a cellar. It went down per step ladder about 3ft and then ran along about 20 yards underground and then ascended by a kind of stairway to about 15ft underground. The whole space was boarded and they had electric light laid on. The Germans also had cupboards & crockery & wicker chairs, sofas & a kapok mattresses while there were plenty of empty beer and wine bottles and glasses. This is the kind of place we have to bomb and bayonet them out of. They are very brave when they get down in these dug outs but they change their tune when they get a mills hand grenade thrown down among them.

Some of the Australians are peculiar beggars, one chap thought the Germans were not good enough to kill with a good honest bayonet so he touched two of them with a shovel. Another humorous cove saw a dead Germans hand sticking out of the side of a sap trench which everyone has to pass. It looked as if was he was begging so the Australian cove wrote a note “give it buckshees” & put it into the hand rather a grim joke I thought as we ought to reverence the dead for will have to read someone else’s letter to get the rest of the news as I have no more paper.

From Walter

Sept. 2 1916 France