M.E.F.
Jan 21/18
Dear Mother
No more mails in since I last wrote but we don’t expect them nowadays much under a fortnight, or 3 weeks interval. It’s been cold again this week, with frost and North winds. But it has been fine and cloudless though the sun has not been over-strong. All the same it’s good clean honest cold weather, not raw and misty like it was when it rained such a lot a week or so ago.
Our only excitement lately – yesterday in fact – was one of the very rare visits of a Turkish aeroplane. He was very high up, barely distinguishable, and I think he must have been on his way somewhere else. Anyhow he was’nt stopping here, and our “Archies” shelled him – unsuccessfully – to speed him on his way and he disappeared into the distance- one of our ‘planes, which fly round here pretty well every day, has not returned and they can get no news of him. A rotten country to get lost or stranded in, this, I should think as it is very sparsely inhabited, and then mostly by unfriendly arabs.
I got a wire from you a day or two ago, just one word “congratulations”; very many thanks : the general wired & told me they had given me a brevet so I suppose you have seen it in some list. I do hope they give some of the other officers & men something. They are sure to of course, later on I suppose, as of course they did all the dirty work and deserve a reward. But they run these things in their own way, & the method is only known to themselves. I fancy a good many decorations & rewards are bagged by higher officials which only leaves a very few for the rank & file who deserve at least as many, if not more than the “gilded staff”. However it’s not for me to criticise.
A very dull letter I’m afraid but there’s nothing to write about. I’m very fit & well.
Best love to all yr loving son
Ted
Archies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevet_%28military%29
