‘I am writing this to you from a school where my Company is,’ Sherriff told his mother. ‘The men  [are] being used for various fatigues etc, so till now we have not had much work to do.’

In fact, ‘C’ Company had been lent by the Battalion to an Officers’ Training School near St Omer, while the Battalion remained in rest billets around the town of Fromentel, training in ‘saluting, squad drill, musketry (including range firing), route marching, extended order and the training of platoons, companies and battalion for offensive action.‘

Sherriff, however, was able to ease back into army life:

‘We are in nice country and are not overworked at present – I cannot say how long we are out resting for – it may be, I hope, for a fortnight – but you cannot tell at all: it was rather nice to come back and find them out like this as it would have been wretched to have gone up the line straightaway.’

It was a beautiful day, and he found himself wondering what he would have been doing at this time in England (‘I imagine we would now just be getting ready to go on the river’). He did not feel as miserable as he had when he first returned from leave (when he had felt ‘most dejected after such a glorious time’), and understood that he was bound to feel some reaction after so many days of ‘absolutely uninterrupted happiness’:

‘I went away feeling that nothing on earth could have made our holiday happier than it was – I absolutely cannot describe how I enjoyed it (in words) but I am sure you know yourself that we could have done nothing to equal what we actually did if we had it all over again.’

Unlike the previous day he did not end by cautioning her about the length of time they would need to wait for his next leave [further suggesting that he had begun to accommodate himself to being back with the Battalion once more]; instead he just promised a longer letter very soon.

[Next letter: 8 July]