Original Letter
France.
23rd Sept., 1917.
My Own Bubby:–
How is every little thing? Outside here, the Band is playing sneaky music and I want to shake my feet. It is a good Band but as I told you before music makes my feet itch, unsettles me. I could never properly enjoy music while sitting still. I must be shifting about. I think I could enjoy this little Band Concert to-night more if you and I were together in a kind of a sort of a canoe – just within earshot of the music. And it wouldn’t matter really about the music. I just want to be with you Honeybud. Music would only be a trimming. I am just wild to-day to be with you and I want to reach out through half of France and grab you. The Band is playing “Blighty” now and is not giving me a thrill. I want my leave in France. My big hope is for leave before or in December and that the war will be over before my leave comes. I shall do all I can to get the leave and I suppose I can safely leave winning the war to the Powers that Be.
I haven’t any news to-day at all. My pack did not turn up. Jimmie Graham put me on a false trail but I haven’t given up hope yet.
I have heard nothing of the dope you mention about Harris transferring or about me going back but they must have some foundation for their yarns. I’m hoping for action of some kind pretty soon.
Dearest, I worship you to-day – do you feel it? It’s just surging up in me and I know that I love you just as much as you love me.
Your own Ross
Jimmie Graham
- About James Graham
- There were at least two James Grahams in the 50th, possibly more.
It sounds as though "Jimmie Graham" might be a different person than the "Major Graham" Ross mentions from time to time. (Perhaps Jimmie is of lower rank? Maybe he works in QMS if he thinks he can get Ross's pack back...) Based on the casual, comradely way Ross refers to him, we would assume he was a fellow NCO rather than a senior officer.
Accordingly, we have guessed that the James Graham who signed up in Calgary at the age of 33, giving his occupation as teamster, is the Jimmie Graham Ross mentions. However, there was also a Lieutenant James Graham in the 50th (who appears to have been Major Graham's son). Lieut. J. Graham did not join the battalion until November 25, 1917, however, and Ross mentions Jimmie before then.
Can anyone clarify this? Or does anyone have any other information on Jimmie Graham?
- Contribute to the Project
- Do you have more information about this topic? Please let us know »
Blighty
- Note
- “Blighty – an informal and often affectionate term for Britain or England, chiefly as used by soldiers of the First and Second World Wars (in the First World War, a wound which was sufficiently serious to merit being shipped home to Britain was known as a Blighty).
"The term was first used by soldiers serving in India, and is an Anglo-Indian alteration of Urdu bilyat ‘foreign, European’, from Arabic wilyat, wilya ‘dominion, district’.”
Source: “Blighty,” A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Elizabeth Knowles (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online, accessed 1 November 2007 (cited on Yahoo! Answers, http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071101085735AAheyF0, accessed 6 December 2007). - Links & References
- Contribute to the Project
- Do you have more information about this topic? Please let us know »
Harris
- About Harris
- Is this the same as the Lieut. R.J. Harris who is "taken on strength" on 25 November 1917?
Ross is writing to Harris in September 1917, so Harris is obviously not at the front with the 50th Bn. at the time. And both Ross and Mary seem to know him - or Mary at least knows of him. Could it be that Harris is in Rouen with the Canadian administrative offices there - as Ross was before - and is eventually transferred to the front with the 50th in November - just as, earlier, Ross was?
Does anyone know the answers to these questions? - Contribute to the Project
- Do you have more information about this topic? Please let us know »
dope
- Note
- The Oxford English Dictionary gives dope as “Information, esp. on a particular subject or of a kind not widely disseminated or easily obtained; (a statement of) facts or essential details...”
Several of the OED’s citations for this use of the word are from the WWI era:1914 JACKSON & HELLYER Vocab. Criminal Slang 8, The most popular slang term in use today in the unregenerate world — ‘dope’ ... signifying ‘news’, ‘intelligence’, or ‘meaning’. 1917 A.G. EMPEY From Fire Step 103, I was to send the dope to Cassell and he would transmit it to the Battery Commander as officially coming through the observation post.
Source: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed, prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). - Contribute to the Project
- Do you have more information about this topic? Please let us know »
War Diary
Divine service in forenoon. The Battalion went over the tapes in the afternoon. Major J.L.R. PARRY given permission to wear badges of rank of Lieut. Colonel pending promotion.
View complete War Diary »