‘I am afraid I made rather a pig of myself over that parcel,’ he wrote to his mother: ‘I have felt rather bilious this morning.’ He then changed his mind, concluding that it wasn’t the parcel that had done it – it was more likely to have been bad water. Whatever the cause, he had been sick earlier and had a bad pain in his stomach, but at least had been able to lie down.

His mood had not been helped by rats getting into the food supplies. They had opened a couple of packets of soup powder, and carried off a couple more (to ‘goodness only knows where’). They had gnawed at some chocolate and eaten two or three candles, before starting on a bar of soap (which they soon left alone). What annoyed him most, however, was that they ‘pulled that little bag of peppermints that were in my parcel onto the floor, and those they did not eat they trampled underfoot.’ But he and Gibson had learned their lesson, and would take care to cover all their supplies in the future.

The Pied Piper

[Morris, however, had a different solution, as Sherriff outlined in his later Memoir: ‘“What we do want”, remarked Morris, after he finished the first part of the anti-rat campaign, “is that bloke who hypnertised all the rats, and tootled them away with a flute, and then took them all into a mountain and shut ‘em in – Hamilton was ‘is name, I think – I’d ‘ave a try only I ain’t got no flute, and there ain’t no convenient mountain ‘ereabouts – it ‘ud be rotten to get ‘em all out a followin’ yer, and then not know what to do wiv ‘em.’]

Before finishing his letter he told his mother that he was still intending to apply for the Flying Corps (‘directly a favourable opportunity arises’), but that he didn’t want to appear in too much of a hurry. In fact he never did get around to applying, instead setting his sights on another branch of the service (the Engineers).

[Next letters: 30 October]