Original Letter
France.
My Dearest Mary:–
We got settled last night in this our newest home, about eleven o’clock. But before even getting settled I scarcely had my pack off when the mail was delivered! Wasn’t that glorious. And two letters from you. Here I was all braced for no mail for at least two days on the move forward, and instead of that it was on my heels. This is the good front and I love it. One letter was from Paris and the other the first one after getting home. They did let my Baby sleep in and she had to make her little legs twinkle to catch her train. And old stingy wouldn’t tell me a joke because my friends look at me queerlike when I repeat her jokes. Who said I would ever tell it to anyone? Course I wouldn’t ever dare tell any of your jokes again not after that last awful one but that doesn’t say that you are not to tell them to me. Funny but I’m blowed if I can remember what that other one was – I wish I could think of it – so that I could shock someone else. Why shouldn’t they be shocked?
We had a great trip last night. There is some snow on the ground – two or three inches and it was a glorious night a silver haze and no moon, the sort of night I have always loved. We travelled through some waste places but they didn’t look so terribly desolate at night with snow on them as they do in daylight. At the front there should never be any daylight – its quite ghastly enough at night. But in some sort of gruesome morbid way it is fasinating – when its quiet. Our home is in a cellar, good old cellar, there are unmistakable proofs that at one time there was a building over this cellar but it has parted long since. But it is no jerry built place, this and there is lots of earth between our roof and the weather. Any person with only a smattering scattering trifling knowledge of hygiene knows that if a person lives in a dark cellar where fresh air comes in the form of a draught that it will eventually impair the health until at ninety a man will only be a mere shadow of his former self. But here everyone seems to prefer to court ill health.
The old arrangement is on again Turk working all night and I take the day shift and its fine. It is fairly busy but only a rush occasionally There is a good chicken wire bed in our cellar and we take it in turns Turk and I. Altogether we are far more comfortable than we were before.
But, Dear, I’m getting so lonesome for you that I am nearly talking to myself. It is only too true that I am just crazy to be with you Sweetheart, to love you, to worship you, to take you in my arms and keep you forever and ever and – well I’ve just go[t] to quit eating pepper – Oh Playfair you bad. Until to-morrow, Sweetheart. Your own Ross
[This is written up the margin of the last page:]
Of course your French is good and of course they could understand it. I’d like to see them try to misunderstand.
30th Sept. 1917
- Note
- There are two letters for this date and it is difficult to say which was written first.
Was this one written late on Sept 29th? (i.e., early on Sept. 30th before he went to bed)?
Then why does he say "last night" instead of "just now"? - Contribute to the Project
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Turk
- About Sergeant Lawson Turcotte
- A fellow NCO in Ross’s battalion. Of all the men in the battalion, Turkey seems to have been the one Ross worked with most closely in the course of his duties.
Does anyone have any more information on this person?
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Paris
- Note
- Paris is mentioned frequently in the letters, since it is the central point of the railway system; all travel in France goes through Paris. Mary accompanied Ross to Paris when he was going to the front initially and again after his leave in Bernay.
Although the flavour of Paris as a charming and cosmopolitan city is well known, in wartime Paris had a very particular character, which is captured by the American journalist, William Beebe, in his June 1918 article, “A Naturalist in Paris,” in Atlantic Monthly:In these days when the very life and existence of individuals and nations are at hair-trigger poise, it is well to have lived in Paris and at the Front. One longs to be in both places at once. Yet there is a veritable monotony of excitement in the first lines: we can kill in only a certain number of ways, and one has a fixed number of limbs and organs to be injured. But behind the lines, in Paris, the ways of living, of physical and mental healing, of readjustment, of temporary despair and sorrow, of eternal hope, of selfishness and altruism – these are myriad in number and wholly absorbing in interest. ...
Walking along the boulevards of Paris one feels somehow as if one had slipped back into mediaeval times, the emphasis of color and ornament is so reversed. Almost every man is clad in bright hues, or with some warm splash or stripe, and most are adorned with medals and citations. So many women are in dark colors, if not in crape, that one’s thought of their costumes in general is of sombreness of hue.
... One’s geography of Paris would read: the city is bounded on the north by supply dépôts, on the south by hospitals, and on the west by aerodromes. Its principal imports and exports are bandages, crape, wooden legs, and Colonials; its products are war-bread, war-literature, faith, and hope.
Source: “William Beebe: World War One Witness (The Atlantic Monthly, 1918),” old magazine articles.com, http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/Naturalist-in-Paris%20Pt.pdf, accessed 12 February 2008. - Contribute to the Project
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War Diary
Working parties as usual. Lewis Gun and Rifle Grenade Classes in afternoon. Divine service in the afternoon. Officers on reconnaissance. CASUALTIES. 1 O.R. Died of Wounds.
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