With Remembrance Day approaching, let’s take a journey back in time to WW1:
“July 3, 1916
Hello Princess [Miss Ada McGuire],
Your last letter and paper received. A paper here is very much appreciated. We are doing well on this front. The 16th have been in the Reserve trenches for quite a while. I was up for the front line 3 times. You can have no idea what it is like. The night seems the worst.
We will be getting a rest in a couple of days. I guess it will be a short one, about five days – Every night we used to get a drink of rum Gee whiz! How we used to look forward to that medicine after being on a working party all night. They have stopped it now for the summer. We do nothing by daylight, just stay in our “dug-outs” Well you will have to wait until I come home for experiences and news in general. These letters are of course censored and I don’t want to say anything that I should not say.
So Willie is trying hard. Tell him to stay where he is. Last night I was out on a working party about a quarter of a mile from the front line. We were covering up a cable. When we were coming back about 1:30 a.m. I was just congratulating myself on returning nice and clean when down I go in the cutest mud hole I ever saw – (but that’s nothing).
We left our kilts behind a few miles. Our dress consists of trousers cut short above the knees, steel helmet (which is a great life saver against shrapnel) that is one item I do not like – “shells” – their noise and the whining through the air. They have no ear for music at all.
But the main thing about this letter is that I am well. Won’t we appreciate a bath – say! Luxuries are at a premium, but we don’t need them here. We get cigarettes and tobacco sent to us from some unknown source so you see we don’t do so badly. Give my love to aunt Tillie and Mother, keep up the good spirits fair maiden, and everything will come to those who wait.
Au revoir Girls,
Edgar. [serving in the 16th battalion of the Canadian Scottish, based somewhere near Flanders]”
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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