Original Letter

France

23rd Nov. 1917

My Dearest Maidie:–

Say Baby don’t you ever get letters from me? I swear that I do write letters at least every so often but they never do seem to get through. I have had a letter to-night and still you haven’t had a letter! My Sweetheart! – I haven’t missed writing very often, but I know that our mail service is on the blink especially during the stormy times of the last three weeks. For things have been humming with us these times with us, and it is not so strange if things get mixed up. But your letters seem to get through to me at least fairly regularly and I can’t see why my letters do not reach you. Today I got up at seven thirty – imagine staying in bed until seven thirty? – and cleaned and shined until nearly eight thirty. Then I had to get on the job and at ten o’clock – the first minute I had  I went out for breakfast. This is a real city and there is a restaurant two doors away – and I went in there with Miller and had eggs and bread and cafe au lait. This afternoon I am going to have a bath and a change of underwear. I am not so sure that I am free from puce. I have been itchy lately but can’t locate any thing – anyway I shall welcome a bath. This is a big town, but not so very attractive – just the same its good to get into a respectable place once in a while to get the pitch combed out of one’s hair and liven up a little. For instance it is quite a while since I had my food at a table and I find it a little strange.

Bill Leicester was very slightly wounded when in the line not enough to make him leave his unit but I hear that when they came out his M.O. sent him for a rest. I have been trying hard to locate him but I do not know just where he is. Lord, I was glad to hear that he was well out of that neck of [the] woods, it was no good healthy place and Bill is so long – !

There is an awful bunch of work to get through here and I aim to get everything into pretty good shape while we are here  At the same time just as soon as we are rested and settled I think that we shall take it pretty easy, see the country and take advantage of the rest

Now, Dearest, please get a lot of the rotten letters I have written you and don’t think that I am not writing you [or that I don’t love you]. For I am doing both the latter of course more consistently than the first. I am very sure that at this very minute I love you more than you love me  I have taken soundings felt my pulse and synchronised my watch and I find that I love you more than I ever did  Do you love me as much as that do you think? I just perfectly well know that you do mon ange. I can scarcely wait for the day when we shall be together again – the time – the actual days go quickly and yet it seems awfully long since I left you – I know that it won’t be so long before I see you again. With all my love, Dear.

Your own

Ross

the stormy times of the last three weeks

Note
Ross is likely referring to the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) and its aftermath.
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Bill Leicester

About Lieutenant William Frederick Leicester
It sounds as though Bill Leicester is someone that Mary and Ross both know—perhaps a friend from Canada before Ross and Bill enlisted. Since Bill enlisted in Swift Current, where, his Officers' Declaration Paper tells us, his wife lives, this seems likely: Swift Current is only 35 km from Rush Lake, where Mary and Ross lived for a time.

Like Major Graham, Bill appears to have been an active member of the military before the war (the documents Library and Archives Canada has on file for them are Officers' Declaration Papers rather than the Attestation Papers filled out by men who were enlisting for the first time - and neither Bill nor Major Graham seems to have a regimental number, which all men were assigned upon enlistment).

See the photograph of Mary and Bill with some other officers. (Mary is second from the left and Bill second from the right.) Note Bill's height, which Ross remarks upon in his letter of Nov. 23, 1917 ("Bill is so long — !").

Does anyone have any more information on Bill Leicester?

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Miller

About Miller
Ross mentions Miller frequently and it sounds as though he is one of the NCOs working with Ross and Turkey in the Orderly Room.

There are, unfortunately, five Millers listed in the Calgary Herald as returning with the 50th Bn. It is hard to know which one he is.

In his letter of Nov. 8, 1917, Ross says that Miller is "not twenty yet" and spent nine months in the line and was wounded twice before being assigned to the Orderly Room.

Does anyone have any information that would help us to identify Miller?
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puce

Note
Puce translates as flea, but Ross probably means lice (fleas cannot live on humans).
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M.O.

Note
Medical Officer
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bath

Note
Desmond Morton, in When Your Number’s Up, tells us that
Part of any rest was a bath parade, ideally once a week, sometimes only monthly. Facilities ranged from former breweries with open vats to the elegantly tiled minehead showers near Vimy Ridge [see Ross’s letter of Nov. 25, 1917] where the men were crowded three to a stall. Many baths were housed in prefabricated metal huts where the winter wind whistled and water froze on the duckboards. Rusty nozzles emitted a few minutes of warm water, stopped for men to soap themselves and gushed a few more minutes of cold water, leaving the shivering men to dry themselves with a dirty towel or a flannel shirttail. Medical officers insisted that hot showers would be “enervating.”

“Imagine a watering can with all the holes but three blocked up, spraying tepid water for three minutes in a room without doors or windows, and a cold windy day,” Garnet Durham explained. A detail of men could be processed in thirty minutes. They were soon lousy again. Most baths included a laundry where Belgian refugee women washed, sorted, and sometimes repaired socks, shirts, and underwear. Attendants tossed “clean” clothes to shivering soldiers as they emerged. Sharp-eyed soldiers spotted the larvae that remained in the seams of flannel shirts and woollen drawers. In 1918, when lice were finally identified as the carriers of trench fever, a pair of Canadian medical officers finally had their ideas on effective disinfection adopted, and both baths and disinfection improved.

Either Ross is not being completely frank with Mary or he was lucky, since he seems to have had more pleasant experiences with bathing than the average soldier as described by Morton.

Source: Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House, 1993), 145.

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War Diary

6.30 A.M. Reveille and Sectional Training from 8.30 A.M. to 12.30 P.M. Lewis Gun and Rifle Grenade and Bombing Classes started, Inspection of all Billets by Commanding Officer. ... Reinforcements of 21 Other Ranks taken on strength.

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Bill Leicester: Bill Leicester:

Map

  • Location: Bruay
  • Battalion role: Rest

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