23rd Battalion,
West Sandling,
Shorncliffe.
Sept. 24th, 1915.

My dear Kae:

Your letter of September 9th arrived on Tuesday and I was very glad to hear that you had enjoyed your trip to London. It is strange how very slowly London seems to grow or change in any way. It appears to have settled down more or less complacently to be a third class city for the rest of its days, and is no doubt making the best of its destiny. It always was a pretty place in a limited sort of way, and with time and improvement should become quite a fine town. I don’t suppose it will ever become a very large place, because of course it is not a commercial town in any sense and therefore only vigorous effort makes it to some extent an industrial one. So its growth is largely dependent upon the requirements of the surrounding agricultural community.

How unfortunate that the weather did not behave during your stay at Jackson’s Point. Of course it isn’t a very sporty place and there isn’t very much going on, but when the weather is nice one can have quite a lot of fun on the lake. The last time I was there it was during the harvest moon and we had a picnic by moonlight on the shore away up the lake, building a fire and scramblingeggs and tomatoes with fried bacon and tea. I tell you it was jolly. Unfortunately the wind, which is most undependable up there, died down completely and we had to row home, arriving in with much singing and such like at about 2 a.m. Much scandal in the Post Office the next day.

How is Gladys Rose, and what on earth has she been doing since she disappeared from mortal ken last summer. I half expected to run across her here somewhere. It is to be hoped that her pa-pa has ceased to force the attentions of over paid medical experts upon her and that as a result she is feeling better and stronger. Give her my kindest regards and also let me know Rona’s new address, as I believe I owe her a letter. Meanwhile, if you are writing tell her I hope she will enjoy her career at Macdonald Hall as only she knows how to do.

Tell Nennie I haven’t yet run into Major McKay of Calgary or Edmonton, but have my lamps searching the gloom for him. Also to be sure and let me know when Mrs. Wade is coming across and to give her my address and tell her to ring up the 23rd Battalion or drop me a line to let me know where she is staying. I shall be more than pleased to see her if she comes.

I think I mentioned in my short note of day before yesterday that the 23rd has moved in winter quarters, so my address from now on will be West Sandling instead of Dibgate. We are in huts of course, long gloomy corrugated iron structures, which hold about sixty men like a college dormitory. The officers’ quarters are divided into small rooms which hold two or three, and are furnished with iron bedsteads and a dressing table and writing table, with electric light throughout. The officers’ anteroom has large easy chairs and a fire place, so we should be quite comfortable. Of course huts are less drafty and healthier, but in this rainy English winter it makes it almost impossible to take off one’s underwear at night because by morning it is so wet that one can’t put it on again. The huts at least are dry.

Just at present and for the next couple of weeks, George and I are living under canvas at Shorncliffe at the Canadian Training School. There are about 200 officers here taking courses in various subjects. I am on Bombs and George on Field Works. Our course is rather easy, consisting mostly in lectures on the construction, use and tactics of grenades and practise in throwing them with deadly accuracy. One has to be able to stand in a trench below the ground and heave a bomb over a couple of traverses into another piece of trench which one can’t see. Perhaps you would be interested to know how they use the infernal things. Well, you see its this way. When one has charged and captured a length of German trench, then the bombers come into play. They go out sideways and down the communication trenches in parties of three with a man with short sword and revolver to protect them, and bomb the Germans out from traverse to traverse, extending and consolidating our gain while the men behind in the captured section are busy reversing the parapet preparing to receive the counter attack which always comes. I’ll draw you a little picture.
 
[Sketch is missing]

The bombers stand in A and throw over the high traverses to B, clean it out, and then go on to the next section of fire trench. They also go down the communication trenches, clearing out each leg as they go, and sometimes right on into the second line. When you drop a high explosive grenade into a section of trench you can go in and lead the Germans out by the hand. They don’t like them. Great sport they tell me!

George says he spends most of the day digging and filling sandbags and displays an array of blisters which would have done us credit in our palmy rowing days.

Nennie tells me that you are thinking of going to the University. Well, if you do, avoid going to extremes. Don’t neglect everything for your studies because there are really a number of interests at the University which should not be neglected. So many people, especially girls, seem to lose all their individuality at the University by too close an application to books alone. On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of a lot of middle-class creatures who go to the University expecting a great social career, because really there is very little in that side of University life, and the people who try to make the University a means of having a good time only either are soon disappointed or else have very limited perspective and social tastes. Not that you won’t probably meet some very nice boys and girls there who will perhaps help you to a good time, but you should realize that all that is really after all on the side and not essentially a part of your university life, but merely a pleasant incident of it. The grim lessons of this catastrophic war are showing me that there is a great deal of sham and unreality about our university learning, about all book-learning, perhaps necessarily so, as it is so largely theoretic and speculative in so far as it is not merely literary and aesthetic, but at the same time it is one of the things that alone make our civilization possible and bearable. When directed into proper channels and when linked with great motives. Read widely, but never be over-awed by the printed page.

Well, dear Kae, give my love to Mother and Dad and Molly and anyone else who happens to be in the domestic "menage” at the moment.

Yours affectionately,
"Errol".