Original Letter

 

France, 6–9–17

 

My Dearest,

Last nights mail brought me two glorious letters – 29th and thirty – the latter having been censored quite a bit. I don’t mean that there was anything censored out of it but it had been read. It nervoused me all up until I read it although I might have known better. Sweetheart they were beautiful letters and I just gorged on them. I had been just starved for letters and was just unutterably lovesome for you and for word from you. I read them twice last night and found time to have another good read this morning. I do hope that you are getting my letters by now. I feel most conscience smitten about not writing those two days but I did explain, didn’t I, that as we were on the move it was impossible. It shall not occur again however. If I can’t find time or a place to write I shall send you a whiz bang. I am glad that you got safely back to the farm (more worrying on my part wasted) and I should be perfectly content to have you stay there I am sure it is the lov[e]liest place and I know that they are the great people. And I feel highly flattered about the pup being named after me. The fact that he has beaucoup fleas does not worry me nor make me think less highly of the honour done me, as some of my best friends here are very very lousy and every time I see any of them scratching I say to myself there but for an ounce of wit and few drops of creosol scratches old Playfair.

I am glad that you settled with Madame L. without too much difficulty. Immediately after I left the house I felt ashamed of myself but I was so upset and troubled at leaving you that I wasn’t the slightest bit rational. If she was a little grasping she was nice to you when you came first and was complaisant. But I am sure that you left her smiling. To-day has been the same as yesterday sunshiny and warm. It rained in the night but our dug out is proof against wet and [I] never even knew it rained until this morning.

But what made me gladdest of all in your letters was the grand lot of love you wrote me It is just wonderful, Dear that you should love me at all but to have you love me such a lot is heavenly. I never deserved such luck and always in my prayers the bulk of my thankfulness is for the love of the best of women. I think of you constantly, Sweetheart You are always in my thoughts. I am terribly lonely without you, away from you, but even in my loneliness I pity all those men about me for although they may have someone who thinks of them they are when compared to me, to be pitied. I love you, Dearest, with every atom of me, and always I am longing for the day when we shall be together again for ever and ever. There can be nothing better than that Sweetest I must close now. All my love.

Ross

 

P.S. I shall write Madame Head ce soir. I was really only waiting until you got there safely to do so. I shall never forget what they have done for us. Ross

lousy

Note
Body lice were a huge problem for soldiers in the trenches in WWI, “breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly. ... [I]t is estimated that up to 97% of officers and men who worked and lived in the trenches were afflicted with lice” ("Life as a Soldier"). It was not until 1918, however, that it was discovered that lice were the important vector in the transmission of trench fever, so for the better part of the war they were regarded merely as a nuisance with no serious attempt made at their eradication.

Desmond Morton, in When Your Number’s Up, recounts:
Bitter weather slowed down the body lice that afflicted most soldiers — and warmer conditions revived them again. Within days of coming to France, most men, even officers, began what Gordon Beatty recalled as “a never-ending battle with cooties.” ... “You know how much I hate mosquito bites,” Lieutenant Claude Williams reminded his mother, “well these are about twice as bad and hardly a square inch of you is left untouched.” Body-lice or pediculis corpori, burrowed into the seams of shirts and underwear, in the folds of kilts, or under the knee of the tightly laced breeches worn by cavalry and gunners; nits or phthirius pubis, crowded under the patch of linen at the crotch of army trousers. Head-lice became so annoying to some men that they shaved themselves bald. Wherever they were, lice caused a continuous and almost indescribable misery. ... Desperate men stripped naked even in bitter weather to attack their torturers. ... Veterans recommended scores of solutions — Keating’s Powder, creosote, cheesecloth underwear, or, as Colonel Lionel Page recommended, no underwear at all.

Will Bird favoured Zambuk, a liniment more commonly used on stiff joints. Soldiers spent their spare time half-naked, “chatting” or “crumbing” — burning lice by running a lighted candle along a shirt seam and listening for the gratifying “pop.” Many woke to find blood seeping from the gashes left by unconscious scratching overnight. In the filthy conditions, infection soon followed. (Morton, 139–40)

Source: “Life as a Soldier – Life in the Trenches – Body Lice,” First World War.Com, www.firstworldwar.com/features/trenchlife.htm
and www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/bodylice.htm, accessed 28 January 2008; Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House, 1993).

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two glorious letters

Note
It is evident from Ross’s side of the correspondence that Mary is a good letter writer — and, particularly, a vivid ranconteur. (See, for instance, Ross’s first letter of 21 September 1917: “I forgot to tell you that I roared over the runaway Sultan and the pigs. It was nothing so very amusing I expect really but the way you told it was funny” or the letter of 28 November 1917, in which Ross writes: “Good funny old Maidie, her letters are always funny. Everybody in the ‘bureau’ here roars when I am reading your letters for I always read a little and then laugh a lot. They are always dying to know the joke. Poor devils what fun have they: For they have no one who could write them such glorious letters.”)

It is heartbreaking that Mary’s side of the correspondence was not saved. However, the men were not allowed to carry any unnecessary weight. In his letter of 7 January 1918, Ross writes, “I went to bed and read every letter since December 6th – I had a haversack full ¬– and destroyed them up to Christmas. ... it is a heartbreaking job destroying your letters and I carry around always just as many as I can.”

The only letter of Mary’s we still have dates from 1951 — and certainly serves to illustrate both the warmth of her affection for Ross and her entertaining style (though one suspects she was not above exaggerating or “embroidering” for effect — surviving family members claim, apparently, that many of Mary’s tales were completely made up!):

P.S. I do not think I’ll be writing again as it mightn’t catch you —
– Be careful dear and hurry back but don’t miss anything. I am fine – just a little lonely – Elizabeth is doing nicely.
M OO [are these O’s hugs?]


117 First Ave.
Ottawa
Monday.

Dearest Dad/
It seems like a thousand years since you left – and I surely am lonesome. The weather is terribly cold too which doesn’t make one any happier. Fortunately I have been very busy. The house was a rare mess one way and another so I spent the rest of the day after you left trying to clean it up, and get a semblance of order into it again.

Mrs. Sullivan asked me to come over to her place in the evening – we had been going over to Dorman’s but apparently Ada hurt her ankle badly enough to send her to bed so we couldn’t see her as they had put her off to sleep. Bill had come back for the weekend from Cornwall. Mrs. Sullivan’s husband was apparently worrying her so she didn’t like to leave the house as he had gone out and the result might be anything so I shouldered a few “Living Flames” and set off to their house. We did the deliveries of the “Flames” and came back to enjoy a – wee chat – however before long Crash! Bang! Alla kazam! – the little fellow lit on the veranda propelled by a taxi drier and when Edith opened the door he sidled in and collapsed in a heap on the hall floor. What a mess! I was all for leaving him “lay” and letting him find himself there but even more so when she insisted on helping him up and he like a naughty child did everything in his power to hinder her helping him – stick his feet in behind things to hinder his progress and when she got him to the stairs stuck his arms through the balustrade rungs etc— She was getting nowhere fast and seemed to be bushed as well so I asked if I could help her and she said “well would you mind?” So I got hold of the little wart and soon twisted his blasted arms out of the balustrade and propelled him with a mighty heave up the little narrow stairs. He became quite docile altho’ I do not think he knew me at all but she was absolutely amazed at the speed that suddenly got him whisked up and the good overcoat & suit off the guy. Gee! I haven’t any patience with these women they are so helpless with a wee scut of a drunk like that. She certainly is big enough to fix that one if she could only put her mind to it. She wheedles and coaxes the little wart and he just adores ba[i]ting her and fighting her – it was an eye opener to me because I didn’t think he ever did get really hopelessly & helplessly liquored up – the little wart doesn’t fold up and go to sleep either like any good little drunk would – he just tears around all night slamming doors turning on the water in the bathroom and falling all over. She says this goes on all night.

I spent yesterday out at Elizabeth’s – Bob was here for me when I came from church, so I didn’t have time yesterday to write the letters I wanted to so am doing them tonight. I have written Peter and have a letter half written to John. I had a letter from him today and he is walking on air he got 90 in Medicine as well and 84 in Pharmacology – the others were 73, 73, & 72. His average being 80.1%. He is greatly elated and should be too.

Mrs. Steven kindly called yesterday morning to say you had arrived safely and had a nice trip. Hope you are having a nice time. It surely is lonesome without you Dearest – Must run along now – Love and kisses.

Mary

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creosol

Note
Cresols are organic compounds often used as solvents, disinfectants, deodorizers, or insecticides. “Cresol solutions are used as household cleaners and disinfectants, perhaps most famously under the trade name Lysol. ... Cresols are found in many foods and in wood and tobacco smoke, crude oil, coal tar, and in brown mixtures such as creosote ... which are wood preservatives” (Wikipedia).

Presumably what Ross was using was something specifically designed for killing or repelling body lice. The experience of a creosol treatment may have been a bit like dousing oneself in Lysol — not necessarily an entirely comfortable experience, since Wikipedia also notes, “Skin contact with high levels of cresols can burn the skin.” Ross seems to have discovered this, saying in his letter of September 18, 1917 "I am getting the smell of creosole out of my nose but my back is pretty raw."

Source: “Cresol,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cresol, accessed 28 January 2008.

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Madame Head

About Netta Head
Netta Head, along with her sister Ruth Grassal, co-owner of Carentonne Cottage in Bernay, where Mary stayed in France. It seems likely that Ross and Mary met Netta's sister Ruth Grassal at a pension in Paris and were then invited to Carentonne Cottage.

(See also note on Bernay with letter of Aug. 31, 1917 and others.)

See the photo of Netta and Ruth (below) — taken much later: in Nice in the 1940s.
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whiz bang

Note
A military glossary from the early part of the century defines whizz-bang (with two z’s) as: “The familiar name at the Front for a certain German field gun shell, from the whizz of its approach and the burst being usually practically simultaneous.”

A secondary meaning, however, is: “An Army Field Postcard, bearing printed sentences of personal details, those not applicable to be struck out.” Ross uses this second meaning of whizz-bang a number of times in the letters.

Source: Edward Fraser and John Gibbons, Soldier and Sailor Words and Phrases (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1925).

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Operation Order

... the 50th Battalion will move into SUPPORT, taking over the accommodation vacated by the 46th Battalion. ... Completion of relief to be wired to Battalion Headquarters by Code word “SAVOY”. ... Battalion Headquarters will close in PIANO DUG-OUT and open in ANXIOUS Trench simultaneously at 9.30 P.M.

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War Diary

Very quiet throughout the day. No sniping. Enemy aircraft fairly active. Considerable enemy movement was observed. We were relieved by the 46th Battalion at 1.05 A.M. 7th inst. and passed into Brigade Support. ... Casualties 2 Other Ranks. A great deal of work was done during this tour improving the line and three posts were established in advance of the line taken over.

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Map

  • Location: Anxious Trench
  • Battalion role: Support

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