Letters From the Front

Dated: January 26, 1916

Letter from The Front

Corp. J. A. Carswell writing from the trenches at the front says:-

January 26, 1916

Haven't had a chance to write for a week or so. We haven't had much real frost although there was quite a little scum on the water this morning, and we rather hated to crawl out and go on fatigue. We got back in good time for dinner though, and the job was not too bad. All, or most of the trenches have to be re-walled you know, and it takes some time to build them. There is so much rain that an ordinary earth wall will not stand for very long but starts sliding down. When in the trenches waders are supplied to the fellows in the worst places and they make things better. I picked up a piece of trench mortar bomb a foot long and a few inches wide, with sharp jagged edges, which whistled rather close to my beam. It was too heavy to send home for a souvenir though. It was so hot I burnt my hand on it, about the time they explode of course, we are making ourselves as small as possible. It gets kind of tiresome wearing our equipment at all times and my shoulders get quite lame at times. There are quite a bit of aeroplane activity today and a few hundred shells were wasted with no apparent result.

I wish you could see us struggling to get our morning meals cooked. Hostilities nearly cease and smokes are seen going up at all points although some effort is made to keep it low. Love to all.

ART

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France, February 4, 1916

Hello, dear Mother:--

Got your letter of the 9th of January this morning, and pleased to get it as we had received no word from home for some weeks, fault of the mails, I guess.

We play football here sometimes, when we are doing nothing more serious. We just came out of the trenches a few days ago and are soon going back I believe. I do not think the censor will mind me saying that much. By the way, does he ever score any of my letters? I am generally pretty careful, but some of the fellows write almost anything they feel like and so they get their letters pretty badly marked up and perhaps even thrown out.

We received two Christmas cakes from you and the parcels came through in pretty good shape, the chocolate bars being the only things to suffer. The socks were really good though. "Churb" has transferred from my company to headquarters company. He is going to be a sniper. He thought he would like the work better, and so I said nothing to dissuade him. One of his best friends had gone before, anyway, and wanted him to go. The work is probably more interesting on the whole, and they have to use their own initiative more. I think a person is more liable to get on anyway, if he moves around a little more, and gets to know a few more people.

Our last trip in the trenches was not too bad although it was fairly warm for a time, too. I picked up one great chunk of shell which I would have liked to keep for a souvenir, but that kind of thing is impossible. A body of a dead German was dug out of our parapet when we were up there, must have been there for a year or more. It talked some, anyway.

So Rev. Harris¹ has gone, too, we sometimes run across some nice chaplains here, and I think they are a good invention. I notice Poland² having been wounded, he was quite a friend of ours. I remember the day too. The Germans were shelling a little town that we had to pass through on our way home from a working party. I guess we were lucky to get off so easy. I am sending some real hand made lace. I got it from a Belgian refugee lady where I often went to get a meal. They have quite a way of making them. It may be cheap stuff, but I can sweat to it being hand made, anyway, and it may be of interest to you or Kate. Best love.

ART