Still behind the lines, training new recruits, Sherriff told his mother that the weather had improved: ‘Today is beautifully warm and sunny – I hope we have got rid of the winter now – everything is turning green in the country and all trees are coming into bud – I can imagine the old apple tree is beginning to show signs of life and the grass is beginning to grow again.’

He hoped that by the same time next year he would be able to see the garden at home for himself, and that he would e settled at the office again- ‘saving up money either to be a Farmer or a Schoolmaster or to stay at the office and go for those long-looked-forward-to tours round England with you in a side car – and our trip to Egypt.’

Sherriff’s mother, in nurses uniform. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/6/6/3)

He told her, as he had before, that he liked the photo she had sent him, and that he kept it in the case that his Company Commander had given him. [Captain Tetley, of ‘D’ Company – to which Sherriff had been briefly attached when he returned from the Engineers – had given him a card case to commemorate the bombardment they had faced together on New Year’s Day.] He hoped that she was getting on well with her nursing:

‘I expect you are becoming quite an important person now – it is funny that since I left England nearly 7 months ago I have not seen an English woman and you very rarely see an upper class French woman – they are all the peasant class round here.’

And with that, he signed off, apologising that, since the photographer had come to take a picture of them in their ‘trench costume’, it was time for him to leave.

[Next letter: 14 April]