Dear Mother,
Many thanks for the photographs. They are splendid - and the books will be nice to have out here, to look up home now and again. We have had it very quiet as far as Boschie's shelling is concerned since we came in here and there is nothing much to write about. We had about five good warm days since I last wrote but there was a heavy thunderstorm on Thursday afternoon and the rain simply rattled down for about twelve or fourteen hours. The soil is clay here and you can imagine what it is like with even one point of rain. The 15th Battery suddenly had Palmer taken away from them and the captain of the 71st Battery made OC. That is the other battery. They gave him a send-off dinner on Thursday night and he went to take over K Battery RHA on Friday morning. I was not at the dinner but think it must have been a merry show as our OC and Kellagher were suffering from the effects in the morning.
Yesterday and today (Sunday) during each afternoon, we boosted off 800 rounds, cutting Bosch wire. It seems rather a waste as we are not going to do anything here.
The last two days and nights there has been heavy firing down south, but I don't know whether it has been the real thing. It looks as if we shall be here another winter - that is, unless something unforeseen happens and Bosche gives in, which is, in my opinion, highly improbable. There can't be many able-bodied men left in Australia now, the number of recruiting meetings they have - I see in today's paper (really two days old) that four conscientious objectors were sentenced to death for refusing to obey orders but that the sentence was remitted to 10 months' hard labour - that ought to knock all objections out of them.
Siggers, one of our subalterns, is on leave at present. I don't know when Bee will get his.
Your affectionate son
Walford,
PS I hope you have had plenty of rain by this.
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