Shoreham Camp, Sussex, England

August 27/17

Dear Folks,

It is about half past five and outside the rain is pouring as it has been doing nearly all day. This morning I was on a fatigue party, marking up at the booth for a musketry class and being rather late in getting back, have been off parade all afternoon: there was to have been some more work but overnight the rain was called off.

I am continuing three hours later. Howard Batstone came in and talked with me for awhile and then some of the fellows lugged me down to the canteen to play for them. Dorland went away this morning with the Machine Gun draft. He will be stationed at Seaford about fifteen or twenty miles east of here. One by one our original bunch has disappeared and the process has been so gradual that it doesn’t seem strange to be without any friends. Of course I get along first rate with the boys in the hut but I have only known them a very short time and they are principally kids of eighteen who were turned down for the M.G. corps because they are under age. They are a frightfully noisy and dirty bunch of gangsters but good natured and fairly honest. Old number 5 platoon though was evidently a peculiar tribe in its observance of cleanliness. Here the fellows seem to have a prejudice against fresh air and cold water. They jump out of bed in the morning and eat breakfast in undershirt and bare feet without though of washing and it is hard to make them understand the advisability of not walking over your blankets with muddy boots. There are three rather remarkable characters in the hut. First there is Seaward, a Newfoundlander who was formerly in the navy. He is without exception the most repulsive fellow I have ever encountered, so much like a whipped cur that it is extremely hard to keep from addressing him as you would a dog. You can tell instinctively that he would lie, steal, cheat or even [?] without a qualm; yet if you keep your eye on him, he is not offensive (except in personal habits) and even kindly. Perhaps I judge him to harshly; it is apparent that the poor chap has had a frightfully hard life, that he has been whipped and bullied and knocked about in cruel style.  He has rudimentary ears, is gorgeously tattooed and speaks with a funny, clipped accent. Then there is Harvey Garld, a returned man from the second division. Dorland described him perfectly in two words as a “gentle lion” he is quiet and shy as a girl you can hardly get a word out of him yet anyone could tell that there is lots of strong stuff within. I like him because he reminds me of Bill: he looks like him and he is Bill’s size. At the time of his enlistment he was a freshman in Medicine at Varsity. He is now awaiting a commission. The third is a little French boy of eighteen named Louis de Bel whose home is in Quebec. He caught pneumonia coming over on the boat and was very sick in hospital in Liverpool for many weeks. When he came here all his friends had been transferred to infantry units and, knowing very little English he must feel terribly lonely. I am beginning to make a friend of him and we are helping each other to learn languages. He is clever and well educated and speaks French with a good accint – at least Dorland, who can speak French volubly now, told me that his accent is comparatively free from Canadianisms.

Got a good sheaf of letters from home this week – two from Father a long one and a short one for my birth day, one from Marion and a card from Mother. I haven’t heard from Bill for quite a while; he is doubtless very busy at present while there is so much hard fighting in progress. I think your play must have been very good Marion. It sounds as though it would act well and the girls in it were evidently quite delightfully horrid little creatures. Did I tell you that I had received a very charming photo from Beryl Cooke? It is so pretty I have kept it here longer than I had intended but you’ll be getting it one of these days and then you can tell me how you like it.

As you say Father the war is undoubtedly drawing to a close. There are all kinds of forces at work and though a lot of Englishmen are shrieking and yapping that it must go on for ever I think the sanity of the world will triumph. It will be most fortunate if the Conscription Bill does not have to come into force in Canada. There, I think, is one of the knottiest, hardest problems that a country ever had to deal with. Sir Wilfrid has taken the stand I should have expected and has acted it seems to me with the consistency of a political philosopher. Though you may all disagree with me, I am in [?] to follow his lead. It is impossible to discuss the question here though as last post has gone and my bed ought to be made before ‘lights out’ though it nearly always happens that I have to make it in the dark.

Much love to every one of you. I often think of how happy we’ll all be when we are reunited again,

George