2 February 1917

 

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Transcription

2. 2. 17.

My dear Mother,

Many thanks for your last, also for birthday letters from Father & the 3 girls, & for 2 bottles of drink & a box of cigars – all very tasty. The cake has not yet arrived, but we have got another which was sent to our Transport Officer, whose birthday is to-day, so we have shared that. It is still very cold & dry & there is lots of snow on the ground, which must have been there now for 3 weeks. Things seem very quiet at the moment. There has been a lot of heavy artillery fire in the distance for some days, but it has stopped to-day & was probably due to the Bosch stunt in Belgium a few days ago. I was to have gone down to Boulogne for a week from to-morrow on a sort of conference which is held periodically & for which they haul infantry officers out of the line & it might have been rather interesting, but

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as the C. O. is off again for 10 days in 48 hours time, my joy ride has been cancelled. I don’t know anyhow that there is much to do at Boulogne but it would have been a change from associating with the Bosch. Please tell Father that alas his telescope is no more as the Bosch dropped a Minnie on it & all they have recovered is a bit of twisted brass & part of the eyepiece. How on earth the men using it got off I don’t know as their post, which was a small dug out let into the thickness of the parapet, completely disappeared but they turned up all right, rather shaken but intact. I was watching

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one of ours the other day, which landed in a house behind the Bosch lines. At the start the house wasn’t so bad – that is to say it had 4 walls & most of its roof, but when the flying pig, as we call ours, had done its work the house had completely disappeared & it only took one round to do the trick. I have just been making up the Battalion Pay accounts & have apparently made 90 frs. out of the Government. I may say that it is very difficult to make a penny out of them, so if it is correct I deserve great credit. However I shall probably find in time that they

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have made it out of me. It works out to a big figure – about 20000 frs a month I have to account for & the system is not so easy to work as the authorities would have us believe. My teeth are quite all right & give no trouble, though as I told you I had to visit the Army dentist once.

Love to all

Jack.

 

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