France
Dec 18/16

Dear Fred and Agnes

I received the box O.K. the best things you could have sent home cooking is a great treat it was banged about some but it came just in a welcome time just out in our strong dug out for the last four days will have finished before we start marching back to town it is great to give two or three boys a piece from over there they are getting some boxes now and again I wrote home and Geo.'s yesterday wish I could get more mail it is what we like very much, hope you write Mary once and awhile she needs a little prase or remembernce Marys and your boxes have kept me in little comforts after I sent my money home so it has all worked out dandy, thoes mits and socks are great just the thing for we are going out of the mud for a few weeks our mits got all spoild in the line

I have not seen many fellows I know from home but Joe has in the tenth I slaped a fellow on the back and said hello [Earn?] but he just looked it was not him, there are lots of fellows you think they are fellows you know we must pray for this to come to some settlement there will be no more war if it stops now, it hard for us to get time to write a line between running way down for our [bed?] and water and eats rubing mud off going five or six In to work change cloths put on your harness gas helmet steel hat boots wash, oil your feet it is some confusion was out in a hole big as an acre and thirty ft deep two nights in the rain got one Fritz the first night well bye bye brother

Roy

[Added at top of first page, date/author unknown: “Written Monday –”; “11.”; “Rec’d. Thurs. Jan 11/17 –”]

[Editor’s note: Dot code used by Gullen to secretly indicate his location. Characters that were marked in the letter with dots underneath them have been indicated in the transcription with an underline. The second “b” was dotted twice. Written together (with a space inserted) they spell out “cambne liabbe” (likely a misspelling of Camblain l'Abbé, located southwest of Lens, France).]