April 18th 1917

There is a concert here tonight. I hope it's a good one.

Dear Nen:-

Received your letter written on March 22nd yesterday which is the first I've heard from you. So far Grandma has been my best correspondent as I've had three letters from her. I hope that parcel Ella was sending reaches me soon as it's quite a time since I've tasted her drop cookies.

The weather has been punk but of course we are quite comfortable here, although the dug out Grey and his officers lived in was more comfortable. It rains, sleets, snows and then we have sunshine for awhile. We are sure working good and hard now and are being taught everything different from what we have previously been.

The other fellows are going up the line this week to have a look around but I think I'll stay here as it's a "beastly fag" and I may as well take it easy when I can. This sure is a peach of an advance with the French coming on as well but I guess it will last long enough for us to get there. The general idea seems to be that it might be over by next Christmas but of course that is only guess work. If the weather had only been decent there's no knowing where our bunch would have been by now. When we were up there we saw an awful lot of rifles stuck in the mud bayonets down and wondered what the idea was. We learned the other day that these were where the Germans were buried. We thought it funny that we saw no germans lying around but our infantry gave a mighty good account of themselves.

We are getting trained almost exclusively for open warfare so you can see what we expect will happen when we start.

Humph. Gilbert had a parcel the other day and we all had a good feed but are short now. That was tough luck about Farish Owen but he did mighty good work in burning his plane. The commanders of tanks have to blow them up before leaving too. We have of course captured over 200 guns, i.e. field guns and heavier.

Well, Nen, I guess this is enough for this time with best love to Dad and Ella.

Bev.

Third Army Artillery School
B.E.F. France

Have written to Mrs. Chalul last night.