July 5/17
Dear Mother
No mail in from you this week of course under the new fortnightly show, and I see that the letter mails leaving London on 31st May & parcel mails of 24th of May have been “lost at sea” as the official wording is. Sickening is’nt it, I think it’s the mail after next, as I got letters dated 7th by last mail, so we ought to get 24th May letters next mail, but after that I’m afraid we’ll have to go a whole month without any.
No news much here. Everyone seems to be on the move nowadays, up river, so I expect we shall get our orders shortly. Meanwhile we are very comfy here, though we have had one or two real big days of wind and dust, and it has been hottish, 107 or 108 every day on an average in our tents. The last 2 days have been quite still with no wind; it does away with dust of course, but it makes it a wee bit hotter.
We had a wonderful eclipse of the moon last night, a total one, lasting about 2 hours. I had’nt noticed it in my diary though I see now it is down there. Of course we saw it soon enough as soon as it began at about 11 p.m. as the moon was full, and in about ½ hour or ¾ hour it was entirely blotted out, and only glowed a dull crimson like a cinder, a most impressive sight. It stayed like that for about 2 hours or so & then got all right again. I’ve never seen such a good eclipse and of course we had a splendid view of it. I was sleeping out in the open, as I always do nowadays, and kept on waking up & having a look at the show.
I’ve not been very grand these last few days, “liver” I think the doctor has put it down as; but he has treated me with various dopes and things & I’m ever so much better now, in fact practically well again. In these hot climates I suppose one has a day off occasionally.
We had some swimming sports here the other day for the men, who, as I have told you I think, spend most of the day bathing and we thought we would encourage them by having a few sports, especially for those who have learnt to swim here. The diving was most amusing, as our men are not natural divers, & have only learnt a bit here under our instruction, so you can imagine their efforts off our spring board were amusing to say the least of it.
There seems to be a bit of a lull in France now at the time of writing. What a wonderful show that Messines business must have been, with 19 mines going up, & what a tremendous success it was. On the whole things seem to be going well; the submarine figures are keeping fairly low and level, Russia appears to be going to do an advance, & America’s help in money ships & aeroplanes should be of inestimable value. And perhaps our Salonika army may be able to move more freely now Greece is out of it. But by the time you get this I expect lots of things will have happened so it’s not much good speculating.
The flies seem to have got worse here in the last few days, I spent most of the day swatting them in my tent. They were’nt so bad at first, but seem to have got worse lately.
No news of my socks from the G.O.C! so I expect he’s bagged em himself. However praps I’ll be seeing him in a week or two, though of course I should’nt dare ask him about them!
I’m writing this before breakfast & it looks like another warmish day as there is’nt a breath of wind, though it may get up later of course; I trust it will.
Must end up now. Best love to all
yr loving son
Ted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_%281917%29
