Aug 8/17

Dear Mother

No English mail in this week & I’m afraid we shan’t get one till next week, as the fortnightly krewst is in working order for the present, though it seems it has been stopped again now.

Still very hot, but the nights are getting cooler. It was only 72° at 5 this morning, & it gets up to 112° or so at midday, an extraordinary difference is’nt it. But we are within sight of the cold weather now anyhow & have’nt got much more of this rotten hot weather to get through. How I do hate the heat!

I was out to dinner last night with some pals on the staff of the G.O.C. Tigris Defences, & there I met one Lee, a Captain in the Connaught Rangers. It appears he married a Miss Marks, who used to stay with the Bromley-Bowines, & used to go over to Pirbright with the family & sing at soldiers’ concerts. Lee told me she remembered us all quite well & appeared much struck with us! I can’t quite place her somehow, I seem to have a vague recollection of her name but not her face, but I expect you would remember her all right & the girls too. Where are the Bromley-Bowines by the way? He was a good chap & so was she; is she married yet I wonder? Funny my knocking against Lee like that was’nt it.

There were some swimming sports yesterday which Fox & I went to see. Our men got one or two prizes but on the whole they were rather dull. I paid a visit to my old hospital & met my nurse friends & they were all very nice, & all divided in their opinion as to whether I looked fit or not! Miss Macfarlane, the matron, however, said I looked very well, & so did Bat the doctor, so that’s all right.

No news or signs of our moving yet, though I hear our camp is all ready for us at Baghdad, & we have only to walk into it. Till then I’m afraid I shan’t be able to look up any friends or acquaintances in the Queens.

We still manage to catch a nice lot of fish out of the river which helps to keep the menu going. We shall soon be able to shoot for partridges, & a small bird called a sand-grouse, which fairly swarms out here, there are literally millions of them. I have brought a gun & a few cartridges out with me, but I don’t know really if I’ll have much opportunity to shoot, one is fairly busy nowadays.

A dull letter I’m afraid but it’s not been a particularly exciting week-

Best love to all

yr loving son

Ted

Marched into war to It’s a Long Way to Tipperary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Rangers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandgrouse