PC to Miss Crawshaw, 29 Strathleven franked APO 24 No 15 still censor 137 – ‘No stamps available’ written on top of address side. Card dates 23-11-14
Dear Till
Many thanks for your welcome letter, and how glad I was to receive the parcel, which was very good of you and Aunt to send me out. Will Till I am getting on alright and still in the pink, it is getting terrible cold out here and I have had a heavy fall of snow.
Tell Mattie I would sooner be getting 18 pence and in the warm not much tell him. I have not heard from Tom yet. Jess dropped me a few lines and said she had heard from you. Well Till we are still in the thick of it but we are holding our own and even more.
Well Till Xmas will soon be here and I expect we shall have a cold time of it. Now I will conclude and will write a letter later on Love to all Bid.
23rd November 1914
The Dorsets moved HQ and A Company during the day due to shellfire. But there’s no indication in any records I can find today of where they were or where they moved to.
It seems to me that the fighting has died down a little bit and this is back up by reports in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph, however unreliable as it has been in the past. Whether the quiet period is due to the freezing weather is hard to gauge. It’s certainly implied in the Telegraph. The ferocity of the recent fighting is undoubted, however. The casualty list runs over two pages today.
The postcard from Frank really doesn’t tell us anything, other than confirm the cold weather reported elsewhere. He has received a parcel from home but it doesn’t even say what was in it. I wonder if it was that cake promised by his Aunt Caroline. Whether it contained Bovril or not is debatable but I can’t resist quoting their fabulous advert copy from page 5 of the Daily Telegraph.
The duty of everyone, whether in the firing line or at home. is to keep fit. This is no time for cheap substitutes. Remember
It must be Bovril.
Bovril is British to the Backbone.