Delhi
3.11.16
Dear Mother
I think I must have answered your mail before last only, as we left Lansdowne the day after the mail got in last week. We marched 20 miles last Friday, & arrived at the station about 4 p.m. and went off by train about 10 p.m. & arrived here next morning about 8. Found everything absolute chaos & nothing ready, as is usual out in the country. Our tents had all arrived but there were no poles to pitch them with! And the camping ground was a dry & dusty wilderness. However the tent poles turned up eventually, & we managed to get things going and have settled down quite comfortably now. We each have a great big tent, about the size of ½ the drawing room, and with weird furniture and carpets, a boarded floor & electric light; it is really very different to living in a house, except there’s only one room of course, and it’s very dusty just at present. I use my small manoeuvre tent as a bath room, & as I have always used it to live in it entirely hitherto, I am beginning to wonder now how I used to managed to do so!
We are camped on familiar ground, this camp being near the old polo ground used at the Durbar. But of course things have altered a lot since then & really the only things left are the main roads which were laid out at Durbar time & which have been kept up. All the pomp & magnificence of the Indian chiefs’ camp and all the miles & miles of tents of course are not here, and the place is hard to recognise. It’s fearfully cold in the mornings here, and quite hot during the day, but not unpleasantly so. The Viceroy came here on the 30th, but his entry was private, so we had no show thank goodness. We have a few sentries round his house but he is going away again this evening, & he comes back on the 21st for a few days & then goes away on a long tour to Burma & does’nt come back till the 13 Jan, so I suppose things will be fairly quiet till then.
Not much news nowadays is there, but the Submarines seem to be surprisingly active. I wonder if the Yanks will be too proud to fight after this last ship when several Americans were drowned. I have’nt been out much & have called on no one as we’ve been so busy in camp, but I suppose one will probably be quite lively when the Viceroy comes back in January. I told Ben to address my letters Cox & Co Bombay, as then I can be certain of getting them in case we move off anywhere. I hope Pitney did heaps of good & you had a good rest, I am awfully glad to hear you had gone there, but it sounds funnier than ever!
Love to all yr loving son
Ted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Durbar
