The much anticipated parcel had arrived: socks, chocolate biscuits, ginger and peppermints were all very welcome, he told his mother, but: ‘The cream! Well – it is almost too good to be true!’ The other thing he enjoyed about a parcel was that it was ‘a little mirror in which I can see home…I can see you getting that Peter Robinson box from your cupboard and getting all the articles together and wrapping them up – it’s as good as a Xmas stocking.’

The East Surreys had gone into the line again, so it seemed likely he would stay at the mine a little longer. The Germans had dropped some shells near him earlier in the day – ‘they went whistling over our dugout and falling crash! about 200 yards behind it.’ He told her that he had just sat down to dinner and it quite took away his appetite, because ‘I am afraid I am more nervous than the average.’ In part the problem came because he had enjoyed a quieter time in his present dugout, and ‘the sudden realisation that we were being shelled came as a sort of shock – it never having happened since I have been here I had begun to think we were absolutely out of harm’s way.’

The worst time was when he would go on duty, and have to walk in the direction of the front line, and ‘sometimes you hear a shell wizz overhead and come down behind you – it makes you feel sick sometimes and your breathing comes hard from fear or excitement.’ But sometimes, when faced with his fears of shelling, a little prayer would help:

I was walking up to the mine yesterday when an extra big Minnenwerfer shell fell somewhere in front of us where I had got to go – the crash was terrific and little pieces of earth and stone came whizzing all round, although the shell fell quite 200 yards away. For the moment I felt that I absolutely could not go on then I felt how absurd I was if any men saw me stand still and hesitate, so I said a little prayer asking that I might get through everything safely – and somehow this puts new courage in you…’

He was looking forward to the end of the war – to being able to walk without looking up at the sky for missiles all the time. He was convinced that, if peace could be made on equal terms, everyone would jump for joy. It was all very well for those in England to insist on ‘ a fight to the finish’ – but what exactly was that supposed to mean? ‘If peace was declared tomorrow,’ he wrote, ‘no matter whose favour it was in, I think Germans and English would come across to one another and weep tears of joy.’

[Next letter: 14 November]