Writing to Pips, a downcast Sherriff noted that today was his three-month anniversary of landing in France, but it had been difficult for two reasons: ‘One was that I returned to the battalion [having been relieved], and the other that I was told by the Colonel that he could not give me permission to transfer to the RE as he is short of officers, so two ambitions are thus knocked on the head – or perhaps not ambitions, but hopes’.

At such difficult times, he wrote, he found solace in Marcus Aurelius, as well as Scott and Epictetus. There was no good worrying about what had happened – ‘all there is is to make the best of it and look forward to the future peace that we hope is not so very far off.’

[Next letter: 29 December 1916]