The Continent,

May 31^st 1916.

My dear Ethel,

Thank you very much for your long and interesting letter.  I am glad Harry is gardening & hope you will keep him up to it.  We have a little garden attached to our dug-out.  The money is quite a brain exercise.  One has to learn where to obtain the best exchange.  French money should be spent in French shops & English at the canteens.  Harry didn’t tell me a word about the new thing he is trying for so you must.  I hope he will be successful.  He must try hard.  What sort of a pup is it?  We have a cat which seems to be at home in our dugout.  It has black, white & ginger fur & we are waiting to test its skill in rat-hunting.  We have to wash in the open in water pumped from a stagnant pool & it has a terrible taste when cleaning teeth.  We eat bull’s-eyes etc after doing so.  This is a very favourable place for insects, frogs &c.  I have never seen such peculiar & so coloured things as the insects in my life.  Frogs, lizards, toads, tadpoles, newts & their kinsmen thrive in large numbers, big and small in size.  I have about a dozen buttons to sew on my things.  We don’t put them on as they come off but wait & have quite a field day when it is absolutely necessary.  The coffee here is terribly strong and I am afraid I shall think what they give me at home on my return is very bad stuff.  I haven’t got used to it yet.  The sugar lumps are shaped like dominoes & resemble white peppermints.  They don’t sparkle like our lumps.  The bread is about three inches deep and circular with a diameter of about two feet.  The butter they put on very sparingly.  I must tell Olive they would knock her into a cocked hat in that respect.  A slice of bread & butter (une tartine) is one penny whether you have it from the middle as marked A in the sketch (hm!) (This sketch is a circle with a central line across the middle marked A and a much lower line parallel with the A line marked B) or as marked B.  Both are the same thickness.  I once had some French jam tart & never again.  They can cook omelettes all right.  In the farms they always contrive it so that the manure heap which floats on a pond is opposite the dwelling place.  (See sketch again) 1 is the house, 2 the stables, pig styes etc, 3 the barns (always windowless & dark as pitch) & 4 the pond.  (The sketch shows three vertical rectangles with a forth horizontally above.  The three verticals are numbered from left to right 1, 4, 3 and the horizontal is 2.) In the hot weather the smell from the pond is terrible and the army people put disinfectant on it if we are billeted there which makes it worse if possible.  Oh! Tell Harry that any number of our fellows were two or three yards only off Ian Hay, the novelist.  I don’t think I have anything more to tell you now but I am growing a moustache as the King wants me to (according to one of the divisional bloods) and as the dinner is ready I had better clear off.  As I have a parcel I think I will spurn the army dinner & refuse to have it.  Oh Lord! I have just discovered that the pool where the water came from in which I cleaned my teeth contains a momentous dead rat and loads of black snails.

Now news has arrived saying we are having tea at six & no dinner.  With much love I am,

            Yours

                        Alan

Most likely these letters will not go till tomorrow I find.

On Active Service envelope addressed to Harry R King, Esq., Munmore, Zion Road, Rathgar, Dublin.  On back “Answered 11/6/16.  Hexagonal Passed Field Censor 1347 stamp.