Dear Mother

I have received five or six letters from you and a few others from various other members of the family including about 6 from Edie and Lily. I will do my best to answer when I get a finished work off.

At present we are having a few days out of the danger zone after pretty strenuous time of about 2 months duration which has been spent on road making ammunition carrying and general fatigue besides doing our share of the actual firing line. I have had several letters from Uncle George of Putney who keeps me very abundantly supplied with cigarettes and other ‘smokeables’. He writes nice letters and I am always glad to get? them his son (my cousin) Leonard. He is a 2nd Lt in the Engineers at Salonika and does road making out there. His son Douglas is still rather ill he says and seems pleased to get my letters by all accounts. The fact all the ? relatives have been most generous and kind to me ever since I have been in France so you can rest assured that I lacked absolutely nothing that I want.

The winter is now over and with its most of those miseries due to the wet and cold which we poor beggars had to face and suffer. Getting through the mud of the Somme resembles a fly crawling about on flypaper and was terribly tiring and the only thing that made any movement possible was the duckboard tracks of which hundreds of miles have been laid.

Once I was on a particular ration fatigue and had to carry two saddlebags full of tucker to the boys in the firing line. The route was through a sap trench about a mile long which was up to the thighs in slush and water. Then we had to get out of the trench and walk through more mud and shell holes past rows of dead men until we finally came to the men in the outpost. It might sound alright on paper but when I mentioned that we were being surprised by the Huns (in the dark by flare light) and that there were plenty of shells whizzing about and also we could hardly stand on our own feet for the muck etc it ought to present a different aspect. The weather being much warmer and drier by now we ought not to have those experiences are going. You must not worry about me not getting your letters as I am sure they all arrive. The last I have had to date are written on February 18 which is only about six weeks ago and that is fair enough.

Please do not bother to send parcels Mother as I know you cannot afford and I get heaps. Much as I know you are would like to, I feel it would only put a tax on your funds and I don’t want to do that at all. You must use all that money on yourself and I would be annoyed if you do not use every penny.

I am now the not very proud possessor of a stripe which makes me a Lance Corporal. This gives me more work to do and leaves one open to all to sarcasm of my soldier ‘pals’ and until I get another stripe I do not receive any extra pay. But ‘Nil Desperandum’ I may get on alright and at any rate I will try as the war is sure to end in a few years.

From your list as ever

Walter France 9/7/17