No. 22.

Mon. Sept. 24th 1917

Dear Mother: -

Still at the same old thing ever since I wrote last, and still at the same place. Nothing out of the way ever happens here. Oh yes, I forgot. The other morning an aeroplane came over and & dropped a bomb a few hundred yards from the camp, right in the open. It made a hole about a foot across & two feet deep & the ground all around the hole was seared by the shrapnel just like the rays of the sun. It sure made an awfully small hole in comparison to the noise it made. I think that is the only thing out of the ordinary that has happened.

The Y. has fixed up three tennis courts here, & supply all the necessary articles for playing, you can book an hour only a day & then you have to get there early if you want to get a book in. Of course two persons could book a court each & thus get two hours out of it. Anyway I’ve had quite a few games lately. But you would think that in the Y. they wouldn’t make any distinction between officers & privates, But the other evening we had a court booked for an hour & we got there & there were some officers playing & the man in charge said, Well I can’t very well put those officers off, & so they played thru the hour that we had booked. It’s that sort of thing that makes one disgusted with the whole thing. Here are we supposed to be fighting for freedom & liberty etc. & yet in our own army privates are treated no better than dogs in comparison to the officers. I don’t know how it is in the German army but I know that in the French army there isn’t the difference there is in ours.

I saw Tom Shearer the other night. He is expecting leave to Blighty next week, this week I guess. He has certainly waited long enough for it, twenty months. I don’t think I will have to wait so long as that, as leave is going pretty regularly now. They give you either French leave or Blighty leave & you get French leave sooner than the other, I don’t know which would be the best. I saw Gordon Anderson the other night & he says that Paris beats London all to pieces. Some fellows have been down to Nice & say it’s wonderful down there.

I’ve got two of your letters here, Aug. 21st & Aug 26th. You don’t seem to understand what a Blighty is. It is a wound which takes you to Blighty but from which you fully recover, such as a scratch in the ribs that one fellow got & went to Blighty with. I received the box of cake & maple cream that you sent on Aug. 18th, but not the other one yet. I wish you would quit talking all the time about the evils of soldiering. I don’t think you can tell me anything about it that I don’t already know. In fact I think I could tell you a good bit about it.

That parcel was fine, just the right style. One of the boys didn’t believe it was maple cream because it wasn’t yellow. Does it take very long to sew a box in cloth? It certainly is the only safe way to send them. That one was all broken up but the cloth held it.

We are having swell weather

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