Soup. Salmon croquettes. Asparagus. Stuffed chicken and sausages.
Fruit, custard and cream. Sardines on toast. Coffee.
Not bad for active service. One of us sleeps in the bedroom, Brand,
Kitty, Carroll and I sleep on folding beds and big mattresses in the
mess-room. All borrowed from Madame when we had charmed her tears
away.
Yesterday I had a very good birthday. Please thank everyone very much
for the parcels, especially yourself. They were topping and very
welcome. Who was it sent all the chocolates? I could not quite make
out.
I was very pleased; my servant gave me a box of Abdulla cigarettes,
and the Battery, or rather the Sergeant for the Battery, presented me
with another box.
In the afternoon, Brocklebank, my A.S.C. Captain, took me down to
Albert in his car. It is rather knocked about, and the church has a
huge figure of the Virgin Mary hanging down at right angles to the
church tower; it looks very curious, why it has not fallen I do not
know.
Then, after finding the people we wanted, we went up on to a hill with
glasses to look at the trenches. Before, as you know, the trenches we
were in were breastworks, moulds of earth in perfectly flat country,
and we rarely saw the Bosche trenches except through a periscope. But
here, from the top of the hill, we saw on a hill a mile or two away
long lines on the hillside, where the chalk had been thrown up in
building the trenches, and opposite them other white and brown lines,
where the German trenches were, white lines in all directions--a sort
of maze upon the hillside our trenches and their's--and behind that
hill other hills in the distance, much like Salisbury Plain and
Aldershot. There is a very noticeable difference in the country here
in districts occupied by the English. Civilians here are in their
farms right up to the firing line. In fact, in one instance, an old
woman was known to live for ten days in her cottage, once a lonely
country spot in the open fields, but now with a boundary on each side,
one where the Germans held their front line and one where our front
line existed. Ten days in No Man's Land! But here all things are
different. One rarely sees a French civilian; even here, some twenty
miles back, one sees very few, and in Albert one sees none. The
trenches are also better. Miles and miles of wire and lines of
trenches extend behind Albert, whereas North there is rarely more than
one real line of trenches. The French are much more business-like and
more thorough.
In the evening we returned to dinner, and again we had a very pleasant
one in celebration of my birthday. After dinner we played cut-throat
auction, and so to bed.
To-day Carroll has gone on leave. If I am lucky I may come home in a
week or two. If so, I wonder if it would be possible for us to go up
to Lowood or somewhere of the sort for a week, as I am longing for
some decent country--tennis, &c.
Much love to all, from your loving Son,
ALEC.
May 10th.
May 11th.