Z1360/1/46

Letter (3 sheets) from Wilfred Hammond, marked: BEF France February 25th 1917. My Dear People, I am writing a short letter to you at last and hope you have not been at all anxious about me. Of course, I am O.K. I can’t understand it at all, lately, I absolutely can’t get the writing ‘fluence’* on. The Lord knows what people will think of me. You will be interested to hear that I have a pretty thick cough and have to-day lost my voice. Twice I have let the company down by being No. 3 in the ranks and when numbering shouting “Three” in a loud whisper which no one hears and thus numbering finished. You may wonder what happened to the previous sheet so the following will explain. I had just finished it when two boys in the opposite bay came over on a raiding party and in the rough and tumble that followed everything went “west”. My pal finished up with 1 lb. of soft margarine all over him, hair, tunic and all. I am in a very complacent mood as I have been out on a fatigue party from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. and have had the rest of the time in. Feeding, smoking, and reading (Wipers Times and London Observer) I had your parcel lately, the one with Camp Pie and pudding in it and thank you for it. It is one of the best parcels I have had for some time. By the way, wooden boxes are not essential. A good card-board box is the sort that fits into each, top and bottom, like the box of a back of cards. Must finish now as the opposite couple have got comfortably into bed and we are going to raid them. Night, Night Wilf P.S. 2nd letter within 4 days! [Note by donor: “fluence” was still current in our family as I was growing up. Fluence could simply be “mood” as Wilf uses it here, or it could be the magic power that adults had to make things good and bad happen to mystified kids. When you wakened one morning to find a toy you had been admiring in a shop the previous afternoon – that was a parent’s fluence at work! When your mother managed to appear at just the wrong moment and caught you at some mischief – that was parental fluence too!]

25 February 1917

From: 1917 To: 1917

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France, letters, service personnel, overseas (WW1), 18th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps, coughs, food, tobacco, London Observer, Wipers Times, pies, puddings