Richard Berryman, sketch by Vall
July 22.
Dear Mother.
Many thanks for your letter written June 24th, which Cox sent on to me here. The silly fools have’nt sent the original letters yet, they must be wandering about somewhere & will turn up in the end I suppose. I am with No 39 Indian General Hospital, so you can write to here, but I don’t know how long I shall be here, one gets moved about a bit in this country I fancy.
So Ted never got home after all. How disappointing for Nell. He seems a great swell in Baghdad & must be nice for Jim & he to be together.
We are in tents on the sea shore. A nice breeze during the day. c We’ve got a tennis court of sorts made in the sand, but it’s very difficult to get anything hard here. All the paths are made of wire netting put on top of the sand, & the old original wire netting road by which all the troops marched up to Gaza, runs through our camp. Imagine the miles & miles of wire netting there is down.
I must send you some photographs as soon as I get them developed but they may be failures like that last lot of films. Everyone gets sand fly fever in Baghdad. I had it in Assam. Srotten.
I never forget “Cookoo pin”, of course everyone in church knew you had remembered something when they saw you tying a knot in your handkerchief.
I hope I don’t get sent back to the regiment. I’ve avoided it so far.
Would you get that caricature of me printed. It may cost a good bit, £5 or so, but I shall get heaps for that. I don’t know who would be the best printer for that sort of thing.
Best of love to all
Yr loving son
Richard.
Did you ever find those papers of mine. I want.
- That yellow return ticket
- (a) One paper giving me 6 weeks’ leave
(b) another paper granting me 4 weeks’ leave.
a & b were in duplicate so will you send them in separate envelopes by different mails in case they get sunk.
On reflection, it’s unlikely that Richard is referring to this pastel sketch of him, but of all the brothers he would be the one I would expect to sit for a humorous sketch in a tourist destination. Any other sketch of him hasn’t survived. though.
Route of road to Gaza
