Noted at top “Please return”.

France.

June 11^th 1916

My dear Harry

Thank you very much for your sympathetic letter of the fourth.  How is that you do not acknowledge either of my two letters to you or the one to Ethel?  I will not send this off until I have a green envelope so when you get this it may be ages after the actual writing.  The moustache is coming on all right.  I am very anxious to hear of your interview in London.  I hope it will be all that you wish.  It was very nice for you to see mother and Bernard.  Mother wrote me from London.  The naval battle evidently appears to have been a victory instead of a loss, thank goodness.  Our losses were enormous though.  We do wonder what is going on in Blighty.  The newspapers are very scarce & at least five days old.  I feel rather annoyed that I wasn’t at home to experience all the excitement of the daylight saving affair.  I should think it would be much better in the long run.  So you are to have no Whitsun holidays.  It’s about time then that you wished the Land Commission farewell.  By the way, will you come to England if successful.  I don’t know when we will be home on leave.  I shouldn’t think it would be for three months unfortunately.  This morning we left our dug-outs in the Reserve Trenches.  Our battalion had its share of the fighting line but my platoon was put in the Reserves, which is worse than being in the Firing Line as we have all the fatigues for the battalion & every night go on a working party.  Last night the working party had thrills, at least some of it, in which I was a unit.  Six of us had to get on to the parapet & carry sand bags & dump them in the place marked X in the accompanying picture.  (The accompanying picture shows a trench profile with X by the parapet.  The other letters follow the standard trench profile.)

A (which takes some seeing is the frame work.  B is corrugated iron at the sides & C the parapet.  Stray bullets are plentiful (not as much as usual last night) & dangerous & machine guns play along on you very often, when you have to lie down for some time.  The machine guns give you a warning but are somehow more objectionable.  Being dark you are not aimed at.  Every now & then rockets are fired which light the place up & you must keep perfectly still whatever you are doing.  We were glad to get in the trench again.  Shortly after that feeling of relief a shell exploded just far enough away to be harmless & the powers that were then decided we had better go back.  This party works for four hours.  I can’t of course give you the time.  We were not on the parapet long mind you – but quite long enough for this child, who would prefer a hardboiled egg – of course I did the thing properly and asked for a cigarette during the event, although I don’t like them.  We have just had our allowance of tobacco doled out.  We have different varieties of cigarettes & baccy each time.  We have an ounce of tobacco each & twenty fags.  I am still persevering with my pipe & smoke half a pipeful a day.  Only liking mild tobacco we must get fearfully strong stuff this week.  The names of the cigarettes would tickle you immensely.  I never heard of them before.  The places here are nicknamed, sometimes after parts of London & sometimes of a descriptive character in very forcible language.  All these names have become official too.  We are now in dug-outs resting out of bullet range except in exceptional circumstances.  Shrapnel is the only unwelcome visitor here.  Here for six days I expect.  We have had a few casualties so far.  We have been working all day although we are out “resting”.  We started at eight thirty, had an hour off for dinner, and got back in time for tea.  We were digging trenches.  We feel as though we were being cheated.  Things have not been improved by a constant drizzle all day.

Aunt Pollie sent me a parcel and we were able to have a feed.  She put sausage rolls & tomatoes in with other things & all but one tomato have fuzed with half a dozen rolls.  Strange to say a cake came quite whole, which is most unusual with parcels.  We bought some peaches at the Canteen as well.  I am afraid I haven’t much inclination for writing tonight (tis the twelfth now) so I will end hoping to hear from you immediately you know the London result.  Give my love to Ethel & with the same old wishes for yourself I am

            Your hopeful brother

                        Alan

On Active Service envelope addressed to Harry R King, Munmore, Zion Road, Rathgar, Dublin.

No postmark.  Hexagonal Passed Field Censor 1347 cachet.