Z1360/1/50

Letter (4 sheets) from Wilfred Hammond, marked: The School, Mar 20th/17. My Dear Mother, I am writing this on a pouring wet day and (continued 5 hrs. later) it will be a short one in order to catch the post. I will start off by saying that I received your parcel this morning and was very pleased with it. I brought the bacon to this Belgian house where I am now and had it cooked with two eggs and chips. Bonne! By the way, eggs and chips are the only things anyone in this country know how to cook. I have not yet tried the tongue. I had a horrible fear for a moment that it was a tin of bully. Do you know that they build trenches out here with tins of “bully” and biscuits. It is a recognised fact that if one started digging downwards) not upwards as is usual) at any spot out here, one would first come to a dead horse and then to sacks of “bully”beef. As I was telling May the other day, we are very near to an aerodrome and see hundreds of ‘planes. Last Saturday I saw one loop the loop once and another do so three successive times. However, a little later during the same morning while bayonet fighting, another ‘plane started coming down from a hell of a height when something went wrong and it pitched about and finally the tail part started twisting like a propeller and eventually twisted right off, the whole falling for a while, of course. After this the aeroplane toppled down with a bump, followed a little later by the tail. It dropped about half a mile away and we being bayonet fighting with fixed swords, the colonel called for six of us and that’s how I became a sentry on guard over a smashed plane. This month’s course makes a fine rest from the line for we chaps. We are from all different regiments and as we don’t know each other’s names we call each other by the regiments shortened names such as “Kents’ “K.R.’s” “Fussers” (Fusiliers) “Queenies” (Surreys). We are full of parades all the week from 6.45 a.m. until 6 p.m. except Sundays which we have right off, free from all parades. The Goods! This advance sounds pretty good doesn’t it? I guess it pretty rough for the boys out that way. I wonder when it will be our turn to have a push again. Please sent another 10/- on receipt of this as I intend having a decent feed here. Well, Mother dear, all for now. Wilf

20 March 1917

From: 1917 To: 1917

item

Hammond, Wilfred,
Hammond, May

France, letters, service personnel, overseas (WW1), 18th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps, money, bank notes, rain, weather, bacon, eggs, Belgians, beef, biscuits, horses, aircraft, aerial action overseas, Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment, Royal West Regiment Kent, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers