letter to Cecily

Transcription

28. 8. 1916

My dear Cecily,

Very many thanks for various letters & papers.

I am very sorry not to have written so frequently as usual, but these times make it occasionally rather difficult to get a letter off, & still more difficult to get anything to say.

I have already written home to-day & given them all the news there is.  We are well behind the line at the moment in billets & a very comfortable bed for yours truly which is the first I have slept in for aeons – since the middle of June I guess & that was a very uncomfortable one.  I went out for a ride this afternoon with the C. O. between the showers but we didn’t get far owing to the weather & the crops & dozens of trenches which have been dug from time to time in case the Hun breaks through & one comes across them most unexpectedly in the long grass with any amount of barbed wire, also effectively hidden.

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We also came across some gangs of Bosches – prisoners, whom they are now using on our roads – guarded by diminutive youths who have enlisted but are under age & have been claimed by their parents.  So they are put on this kind of job, not that the Bosch would dream of escaping, as he is quite comfortable & as far as I can gather extremely glad to be out of it all.

We have had the news to-day that Roumania has come in, which everyone considers as the beginning of the end. Whatever else happens it ought to make the Bosch sit up & think a bit.

Love to my cousins.

Yrs Jack.