Sherriff thanked his mother for the long letters he had just received from her: ‘I do think it good of you to write these long letters to me after you have been at the hospital from 8 in the morning till 8 at night.’ But she was now to get some time off, and he was sure she would appreciate it all the more because she had been working so hard. ‘Rest in bed till late,’ he told her, although ‘I should always go for a walk with Auntie…in the afternoons.’

He wished that one of the hot water bottles she was making was for him, although he was always quite warm in bed: ‘I wear my socks, pants and breeches, vest, shirt, leather jacket, woollen jersey, fleece lining, scarf and cap comforter. I get into my sleeping bag and cover over with two mackintoshes, so you can understand that I am kept warm alright.’ So warm, in fact, that he sometimes didn’t want to get out of bed – like this morning, when he had stayed there even while eaten his porridge and sardines on toast.

He told his mother about the walk around the trenches that he had taken the day before [the one he had told Pips about]: ‘It is interesting to peep down the dugouts and see here a little group of men sitting round a fire, playing a mouth organ, and in another one men lying down huddled up in blankets around fires and so on – it is a wonderful little village of rabbit burrows.’

She had asked if there was anything more she could send, and he told her that he doubted she could improve on her parcels, which were ‘really fine’. But as it happened there was one thing he should like: ‘and that is for you to make me a nice pair of long socks – almost stockings – to wear under my trench boots to come just up to my knees…it would be a nice thing for you to make while you are having your holiday and it would keep you quiet resting.’

Sherriff’s sketch of his trench bots. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/2/119)

He still did not know if he was to be relieved, and the uncertainty was having an impact on his work, for he found it hard to take much interest in it with the possibility of a move still hanging over him:

‘if I knew I was in the job for another, say, 3 weeks, I should start away and make all sorts of improvements to my surroundings, but when you are told almost definitely that the relief is coming off and you wait and wait for a messenger with a note , wondering when you have got to go you get very restless…’

But he would know soon, for the Battalion was due to go back into the line in a few days, and if they had not relieved him by then they would not do so until they came back out again.

His mind was obviously on home again, and he asked how things were going there, noting that he had heard that ‘Mr Lang of the sweet shop’ had been called up (but was on sick leave), and wondering whether ‘Fred or Toby Sexton…or any other well-known celebrities’ had been called. Then he started reminiscing once more, picturing his mother sitting up in bed in her ‘violet coat’, or riding home at night: ‘I love to go over the happy days [before parting] one by one, and although it makes me feel sad, it gives me pleasure to realise how well we spent every day.’

[Next letter: 4 December]