Pte C Evans
D Co 90th Wpg Rifles
8th Can Infantry Batt
2nd Brigade
Can Expeditionary overseas force
Salisbury Plain
England

October 29, 1914

Well Harry,

It is getting near the first of November and I hear we are to go the front some time in the early part of December.  I have just got your letter.  No I would not like to walk back, but I would like to go back on a train.  I dont like the ocean.  I wasn’t sick at all, but the boat has a funny way of slipping away from you and ditching you just when you think you are safe.  I don’t like it when the ground moves.  I was up to London last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I had a deuce of a time.  But say, keep the business going, because I will be back sometime next spring or summer.  I was talking to some Tommies who had been at the front and had been wounded by shrapnel at the battle of Aisne.   They say that the German Infantry is no good, they are poor shots, and they can’t face the bayonet.  One lad was going to rejoin his regiment last Monday.  There are a lot of regulars in England yet and half the reserves are called out, but I think we will go before them because the British would need some trained troops to fall back on in case of a big reversal.  You see, the British send over a regiment, and keep them at the front for a couple of weeks and then send over another regiment and bring them back, so our regiment should be going pretty soon as we will be the first Canadians to go.

The first night we were in town I and another lad went out together and had a -- of a good time, were all over town.  The other two lads came in broke.  They had been rolled and they hadn’t been around as much as we were.  I pretty nearly burst laughing when they told me, as both of them were born and brought up in London.  You can have a deuce of a time in London.  I will be going up again before we go to the front.  We are having running parades, drill, night attack, invasions, and route marches, and are getting lots of it.
Charlie