Cardiff, Wales,
Nov. 10, 1916
Dear Sister,
Received collars and box of chocolates O.K. and was glad to receive them. I am getting fed up with this job. This is my eighth week on my back and not much sign of getting up. Well I am feeling fine and in good health only can't move very much. I have certainly been in the Army long enough. We certainly suffer a lot but we do see life. I wrote to Neil a few days ago. He seems as if he wants to join in the spring. Well if he does he is going to spoil the luck of the family. Ron and I are very lucky but there is always one killed out of three in a family so he better stay where he is. If he don't he will certainly wish he had. Ron has passed for Active Service again and I guess he will soon be going. If he goes, when I get out I am going to send him a couple of pounds cause he certainly has used me white. I am almost sure everybody will have to do their share yet cause Fritz is going to fight to the last man. It will only be a small chance of me seeing it again cause I can certainly play old soldier now. I think myself I will land back in Canada soon cause it takes a fearful long time to walk with a broken leg especially how mine was broke. I certainly got it good in the leg. It certainly was some smack when I was hit. I am thinking of Canada all the time and all you people over there but not so much now as I was when I was dodging sausages and bombs, etc. It certainly is an awful place especially when you are told you are going to make an attack at 12 midnight and they start smashing trenches up at 9 o'clock and stay there 3 hours in bombardment and you get the word "Over top in one minute". Your heart comes clean out your mouth and then away you go and you don't know anything until you wake up in a hospital or a couple of hours afterward when things are quiet again. I wish some people could understand what it is like. In June a fellow named McKellar got hit and buried with me. I dug myself out and then him, dressed his first wound which hadn't finished him off, and left him by himself for awhile when another shell hit him and cut him in two. Hal Wansbro is learning to be a machine gunner at Aldershot, England. He will know something before long, believe me! I must close.
Your affec. bro. Cpl MacKinnon