April 30th/18
Dear Mother
Very many thanks for several mail letters from you. Our long lost mails have at last turned up & I have letters from you dated 30th Jan 13th Feb 20th Feb 26th Feb. I’m afraid I’m most awfully busy nowadays and I have only just time for a bare scribble to you.
My chief news of course is that I have met Jim. He turned up one day and rung me up & came & stayed with me that night & is here again to-night. He is most awfully fit & we have had great talks on things & people. He does’nt seem to have changed a bit since I last saw him.
I have been so busy that I really can’t remember when I last wrote, but anyhow I have got this job as instructor at the Infantry School, and I shall be in Baghdad all the hot weather probably. We are in a house, with electric light & fans, so we ought to be comfortable anyway for the summer. But starting off the school of course involves a whole heap of work, and I literally have’nt had a minute to spare, & what I have had I have spent with Jim.
Of course we are all fearfully anxious for news from the Western Front; none too good it seems just at present, but I think the army is doing wonders against such terrific odds; & the line is’nt broken yet by any means. We simply must & will stick it out. How helpless one feels out here, but what can one do. We can only sit & marvel at the wonderful things being done in France and at you people at home waiting anxiously for news & being so wonderfully plucky all the time. We are up against some serious problems now, but we’ll get through all right in the end.
It’s so worth it, to win now, and it’s just a question of endurance, & surely we can hold out as long as anybody. It’s hard to say cheer up I expect, but I do say it all the same. Mother I’m so sleepy & I have’nt written to Nell for a week & she must have a line. Best love to all
yr loving son
Ted
Jim and Ted last met in the summer of 1915 when Jim was in camp in Salisbury Plain and Ted was training recruits in Gloucestershire just before he met Nell. Ted had not met Jim’s wife Sheina by 1918 though it is likely that Jim met Ted’s fiancée Nell.
