Transcription
8th Queens
B.E. F.
21 Decr. 1915
My dear Family,
My best wishes to you all for Xmas, as I imagine this ought to reach you about then. We have had our Turkey as we were not sure that it or we would keep till Saturday, but it is now certain that we don’t move till later & we shall not then go into the trenches at once but wait for the first relief.
Yesterday I spent mostly going to & from St. Omer, as we had ordered a lot of stuff from the Expeditionary Force Canteen for the men & I had to go & check it. St. Omer is quite a big place – Cathedral etc. & swarms of padres, British, – Major General Padrés & Colonel ditto. ad lib. I always wondered before where they came from – evidently this is the place. They all seemed very busy doing nothing, though I daresay some of them were on the same kind of errand as myself.
To-day I was on a Court Martial & we worked off five, but were evidently in a lenient mood, as I don’t think anyone got more than 1 year’s hard labour. Our Lofting has returned to the Battalion looking none the worse for his bullet holes. He turned up with a draft yesterday & as I hear they are sending us another draft we shall be up to strength again before long.
We had a football match this afternoon in a Divisional Competition between the best Companies of each Battn. We had to play the North Staffs. but they were much too good, as our fellows were a very scratch lot & they had some really good players.
Love & best wishes
from Jack.
