21/4/17

My Dearest Dad.

I have not had a letter from you for a week but expect there will be some for me when I join my battalion which I am doing today, my address will be as mentioned in my last letter 11th Reserve Regt. B.E.F. France, this is a new censor regulation that one may not put the address at the top of a letter & of course it is forbidden to mention the names of the French towns.  I am very lucky in that I have three other chaps with me who were at Halton and friends of mine there so it is not like going up alone to join a lot of strangers.  We left the rest camp yesterday and landed at this town which is about four miles from the firing line, we stayed at the hotel last night and I am writing this before breakfast, after that we will go up and report.  This place is knocked about quite a bit but the civilian population seem to be carrying on as usual, there seems to be a great scarcity of glass, hardly any of the windows have any whole panes left, they put a shell over last night when we were having a look around the place, the noise of it passing through the air is quite unique and the way everybody ducked automatically was quite amusing.

I was inoculated before leaving the last place and this time it did not hurt at all, last time in Canada it gave me pains.  Thank you so much for offering to send me out things but as far as I know at present there is nothing I want

I hope everybody is well at home

Best of love
from Bill