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Letter (4 sheets) from Wilfred Hammond, marked: BEF France Feb. 12th 1916 [sic; should be 1917] My Dear People, Just back out of the line and writing to thank you for the fine wallet received on the 7th or 8th inst. It was just what I wanted and will be very useful. This is not “tush” but the solid trufe. I have also to thank you for the papers received regularly. You needn’t send the Weekly Mirror any more, thanks! To-day I got your letter and about that parcel you are wrong. I did not think you had been forgetting me or anything like that, as I am not idiot enough to expect things regularly but you made a remark, quite outside any question of sending another way, to the effect that you hadn’t heard from me for a number of days and you hadn’t sent anything that week as you didn’t want anyone else to get the parcel. That is what I was getting at, not the absence of the parcel. You ought to have known that! For the last month or two I have been in the company office but this last week I have been with the company and shall be henceforward. The last week was spent in dug-outs in a ruined village and I may say that I spent one of the finest weeks since being out here. We were all fairly good pals and always had a fire going and were cooking weird messes such as fried biscuits, French pudding, Quaker Oats and rissoles. Here are the recipes (?). Take the required number of Army biscuits (No.5), boil until soft, place in frying pan with plenty of “bucksheesh” bacon fat and fry until properly india-rubbery. No. 2 – take the broken biscuits of same brand, put in Dixie with water to cover and let her rip on the fire; when properly pulpy, put in and stir up – jam, treacle, dubbin or anything else knocking around. No. 4 – Crush some of the same old biscuits and cut up fine some bully. Mix together and fry with bacon fat until all brown. All of these I have made and eaten. Bye the bye, when I was decorated (sounds like paper hanging) the Divisional General gave us a small card with a short history of our various acts. This card, I told Eva, that I was enclosing with a letter to her, so naturally forgot it. I then sent it in a letter to May but never heard whether it was received. Was it? All this happened quite a while ago! Must finish now, With much love to all, Wilf

12 February 1917

From: 1917 To: 1917

item

Hammond, Wilfred,
Hammond, Eva,
Hammond, May,
Quaker Oats

France, letters, service personnel, overseas (WW1), 18th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps, Weekly Mirror, biscuits, puddings, oats, bacon, jam, beef