Thursday May 29/7

Witley Camp

Surrey

England

My dear Mother, Father + Carrie

               I know it is very wrong for me to be up so late writing letters but see dears I am doing it for a couple of reasons, one is that I must not go to sleep. The next is that I want to have a little talk with you all.

               I am at the present moment in charge of a guard at divisional headquarters and there are reports coming in and guards to change. It is up to me to stay on the job, so if this is a sleepy wandering letter instead of a cheery one why don’t blame me but the guard.

               We are brigade duty battalion this week and it sure does keep us stepping to find enough men to do the work with. I was pretty lucky landing this one as it is not very far away from our camp and is really more of a picket than a guard.

               I call it beastly rather the way Canadian mail has not been coming in lately. I have not had any for over 3 weeks now and if I did not have the consolation of knowing that they were on there way I think I would just go out and eat worms.

               There certainly has not been very much doing as far as I am personally concerned since my last letter written Sunday. On Sunday afternoon a draft came in of about 150, they are all green chaps who have only been over here about a month. They have not had any English Training yet so you can imagine the work we have cut out for us. They are a good bunch all the way through, most of them come from Toronto and it certainly made me feel like an old veteran to be here so much longer than they. On Monday morning I went on parade but there were only 12 of us and all N.C.O’s. We did not do very much. We were shooting rifle grenades all morning and we sure enjoyed the sport. In the afternoon we had a holiday I think they called it Whit Monday or something like that. Well all I hope is that it always comes at such an opportune time. It was an awfully warm day and we did not feel very much like working. Mur and I started out for Godalming but we were not very far on our way before we decided it would be cooler back at the hut.

               I am afraid dears this letter is as I feared it would be, a sleepy one. Murray is pretty busy just now, he is over at the 208^th Bttn as a musketry instructor but he expects to be finsied about Friday and I sure do hope we will be able to get our passes.

               I am anxious to hear about home and how everything and everybody are.

               I am feeling fine, Murrays face has healed up quicker than anything I have ever seen and you can hardly notice it now.

               Remember me to all dears

                              With love

                                             Bob

It is now 2 AM and I have to go and change guards.