Nov 3rd 1915

My darling wife

Just a line to let you know that I am all right, I am writing this from the trenches again & believe me they are a beautiful place to be in just now, since I wrote you last it has done nothing but rain & the mud is something fearful to behold, we are up to our necks in it & are all soaked through & through & the worst of it is that we cant get our things dried as we dare not light any fires in this part of the line for fear of drawing the enemies fire. Every one of us is suffering from colds & Influenza & if it keeps up much longer I am afraid we will all be eligable for the old mans home, we have not got our pants yet or top boots so you may guess what a mess we are in, you ought to see my legs, they are a treat, instead of washing them I have to scrape them & if I do come across another pair of socks underneath the mud, it will be all the better, but to put all joking aside, it is miserable, words cannot express how bad it is, so the best thing I can do is to shut up, you must be tired of hearing me complain about the weather all the time, besides it is all in the days work & it has to be put up with, so what is the use of complaining. I have not had a letter from you now for over a week, nor have I received the parcel yet, but I dont expect to get anything till we get out of here, as the communication trenches are so bad that it is very hard to get much stuff in to us, so I will just have to be patient. The Kamloops people sent out a lot of parcels to the men who left that town & they reached us before we left the last billets, as quite a number of them had been killed or invalided home their parcels were divided up amongst those of us who joined up at the same time & I got a nice parcel all to myself, there was candies, tobacco & cigarettes, a pair of socks, 2 handkerchiefs, a tin of Sabadilla, soap, Talcum Powder, cold cream, a pack of cards & writing paper & lead pencil & two tins of Oxo, I think it was very nice of the Kamloops people to think of their boys, I wonder if the Vernon people would do as much for us, I guess not, anything they have to send will all go to the CMRs, they are the pets & we dont count, however none of the Vernon Boys here expect anything so we wont be disappointed. I saw Andy Campbell when we were in Billets, he was looking well & is getting quite fat, the boys got on to him about writing home that he was wounded, of course he denied it, but it was no use, we all know that nobody else was writing about him, so of course he got mad & wanted to fight, which made the boys rag him all the more, so we dont expect to see much more of Andy, at any rate I dont think he will write much more about being wounded, he has about as much chance of being hit where he is as you have. As usual I have little or no news to tell you dear, I have not seen a paper for some time now, so that I dont know what is going on in the world, things are pretty quiet with us here at present, except that everyone is working very hard fixing up trenches & trying to get the water out of them, I just dread this winter, it has just started, dear only knows what it is going to be like later on, if it gets any worse I dont know what we will do, it will be awful, I will sure be glad when the spring comes again, if I was only clad for it I wouldnt mind so much, I suppose that by the time this reaches you that the cold weather will have started with you, how are you & the children fixed for clothes, dear, I would rather you did not send me any more parcels & that you would put the money into warm clothes for yourself & them, & get yourself lots of wood & get blankets, It would do me all the good in the world to know that you were warm & comfortable this winter, you know, love, that I want you to take good care of yourself, it would break my heart if anything was to happen to you or the children while I am away, I am always looking forward to coming home again & hoping that it wont be long till we are all together again, my darling, if I could only see you again I would be so happy, I think I would just go crazy for love of you, it is so miserable sleeping here on the damp earth & chilled to the bone that I think it will take years for you to warm me up when I get home, so you will have to be prepared to lie mighty close to me, dear, & we will just hug each other to death; then we will surely be warm. Kiss the children for me, dear, & give them both a big love from their dad, oh how I long to see them again. Good night, dear heart, I must close now, so with all the love in my being I remain, my darling, your loving Husband.

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