Transcription
8th Queens
B. E. F.
24. 4. 1916.
My dear Mother,
Many thanks for some magazines from various members of the family last night. I hope to hear that Fathers collar bone is getting on all right. Another fine day & the aeroplanes are buzzing about in swarms. I fancy we have got some new aircraft guns here, as we got 2 of the Bosch planes for certain this morning & they say here that 3 were seen to fall & another one yesterday we brought down in their lines. We move into our new billet to-night & I was round there this morning coping with the inhabitants who speak a mixture of bad French Flemish & broken English. When their French stumped me I tried English in reply & they could often understand. I suppose because the Flemish words are so like ours. The Bosches are still busy on the farm up at the end of the field & have put in 2 or 3 hundred shells there this morning. This time the inhabitants have fled, but their wretched beasts are still in the fields round though they take it all very calmly & don’t quite understand the noise. We have got our own men out of the barns at this farm & they are now sitting in the yard, so that they can be put into the shelter trench if the Bosches turn on here. Several of them look exactly like Bairnsfather pictures – most unalterably bored with the whole thing.
It is very clear to-day & one can see the observation balloons belonging to the Hun for a long way down the line.
You will let me know sometime what the pram costs to repair & what the insurance people are doing about it. If he can I should like Wardill to fit the electric bulbs in the side lamps so that they don’t rattle. He might as well do that when he is doing the rest.
Love to all
Jack.
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