‘I am writing this in my dugout,’ he told Pips, ‘on a brand new table which my servant and Gibson’s servant have just made – it consists of three planks about 4 1/2 feet long nailed together, and is certainly an improvement on the old duckboard we had before.’ The two servants had spent the previous evening putting up wire netting  (‘just like that used in our chicken run’) around the walls to keep the rats out. Now he was back to work on digging out the new room: ‘I am down about a foot at present and am going down six feet if I have time – I expect we will just about finish it for someone else to live in.’

Letter to Pips, 8 December 1916. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/3/120)

Things were ‘going on as usual here’ he reported, ‘…you see the same thing happens pretty well every day as though I was going up to London every day, and it is very difficult to find something I am allowed to write about.’ He was able, however, to tell Pips that, with the battalion back in the line there was no imminent prospect of him being relieved – meaning he might be there another 5 days, or perhaps as much as 17 days, ‘but providing things remain quiet I have not the slightest wish to be moved.’

Although he chafed at the censorship restrictions, he had to impose the same restrictions on his men. He read about 60 or so letters every day, most of which did not extend over one side of paper, and ‘as for anything interesting, I am afraid few try and say anything beyond “I am quite well, give Annie my love, how is Aunt Maud etc etc…”. There is an extraordinary sameness about all their letters – and to judge from their writing there are a good few educated men amongst them.’

In other news he was pleased to have found, when the servants were cleaning out the dugout, a cigarette holder which had gone missing some weeks before. A little bit had been chipped out of the top, but otherwise it was ‘quite useable’. He was glad to have found it as he had become quite attached to it. He was still waiting to hear about his transfer to the RE – but he had been told it would take a month to process, and he had only applied on 20 November, so he would probably have to wait another week or two. In the meantime he had decided to get out of his ‘rather bad habit [of] staying in bed late’, and he now intended to cure himself by getting up at an ‘appointed hour’.

Before signing off he thanked Pips for the postcard with views of Boxhill that he had just received, and promised to return the favour with postcards of France just as soon as he could get them.

[Next letter: 10 December]

He apologised to his mother that the letter was going to be shorter than usual – he had not begun writing it until 4 o’clock, because he had been too busy ‘building a new dugout – or, rather, burrowing underground’. He told her that, once they had heard they were not to be relieved immediately (thus giving them another 6, 12 or possibly 18 days in the mine), they had set to work on building themselves a ‘little bomb-proof dugout’; the Germans did shell ’round about occasionally’, and at least the new shelter would offer some sort of security when the bombs were dropping. And, he assured her, it was good exercise too.

Sherriff’s mother, Connie, in her early twenties, in the 1890s. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 3813/14/1/2)

It was Pips’ birthday, and he told his mother that he could ‘imagine him opening his usual little packets containing socks, handkerchiefs, cigarettes etc, and I wish I could get something worth sending him – but I cannot see anything nice, until I have time to go into a larger town’. He had been enjoying the contents of the parcel he had received recently, which had brought back some fond memories: ‘ I had some of Bellchambers ginger cakes for tea, dear – they always remind me of that walk through the park towards Hampton Court’.

As normal in letters to his mother, he talked to her of his longing for leave:

‘I am looking forward to the great day when I shall start home more than anything I have looked forward to before, I think – I shall plan out everything that we can do so we won’t waste any time – of course I shall look forward to the rest as well – and although I hope I shall not absolutely run you off your legs I expect you will have to be ready for some long rides and walks, dear.’

He ended by noting that she must be enjoying her leave from her nursing position, and the extra hour in bed every morning – but ‘it must also be very nice to be getting £20 for your services when you go back – you must feel your services are valuable – I am so glad you have been successful, dear.’

[Next letter: 8 December]

He told his mother that he had spent the evening before writing a long letter to his Auntie Ede [his father’s sister], and had also organised some hot water so he could give himself a ‘good hot wash-down all over…and a change of clothes’. He explained that, while he would usually go to the baths in the local town, ‘our battalion is now in the town where the baths are and I did not want to run against my Colonel’. He hoped that he would not be relieved before his battalion went back into the line the following day, which would mean at least an extra six days in the mine.He hoped that he would still be there at Christmas, confident that he, Gibson and one of the RE officers could have a ‘jolly time together’.

His servant Morris had gone in to the village to buy some things, pick up letters and parcels, and take his clothes to ‘an old French woman who does washing’. With three changes of pants, vests and shirts he was able to keep clean. Whenever he began to ‘itch’ he would change everything, thus keeping free of lice (although he also applied a good dose of Boots powder before putting his new clothes back on).

Fragment of letter to Mother, 5 December 1916. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/2/120)

His thoughts were still on Xmas and he encouraged his mother not to spend too much on him:

‘There are one or two little things I should love if I knew they came from home – a small Xmas pudding, some dessert of some kind and such like things connected with Xmas and then there is one little thing I should like as a present dear, that is a tie pin…And then if you could make me a nice pair of long socks I think your work will be cut out to supply all my needs.’

In the meantime, he thanked her for the supply of parcels, containing all the ‘dear old things – ginger cakes and chocolate etc etc’ but cautioned her that, if sending weekly parcels was proving too much of a strain, she should send them only fortnightly: ‘There is something about your parcels that there is in no other men’s parcels – theirs look very poor besides yours, dear, you are an absolute expert at it.’

Censoring the men’s letters had taken him longer than expected, and it was now almost time to go on duty, but before closing the letter up he had time to note that ‘we had some tear shells over near us this morning – I had been out and coming back I got a whiff of it, which made my eyes water, but am alright now.’

[Next letter: 6 December]

Writing to Pips, Sherriff was worried: ‘I have just heard that a party of men are coming down to relieve the East Surreys, and I am now anxiously waiting to see whether an Officer comes with the party to relieve me – I have been waiting for the last least three days for this and I am hoping that they may only be sending me and leave me with the party…’.

Pips had asked him to account  for his normal working day. Although he had already written of it on several occasions, he took the trouble to do it again: breakfast at 8:30 (usually porridge, bacon and tea); lounge around a bit while Morris cleans his boots, but by 10:30am he had to be ready to inspect the men who had come from the line at 8:00:

‘I have to see that their boots are clean – trousers and tunics brushed – equipment and rifles clean and oiled – that they have washed and shaved – and if they are clean enough I dismiss them and they crawl into little burrows and apparently sleep till they are awakened to go on duty again.’

From about 11 o’clock he would write letters until lunch at 1 o’clock. In the afternoon it would be more letters, or reading, or ‘I may go for a good sharp walk along some of the trenches to get warm,’ and at 3 o’clock there was another party to inspect, then censoring the men’s letters until tea at 4 o’clock.

At 5:30 he would walk up to where his men were working at the mine, before going to the RE officers’ dugout, where he would remain, apart from the times he would go around seeing that his men were working well, usually every couple of hours or so. He would make a final round at 5:30 am, before heading home, returning to his own dugout around 6:30, where he would sleep until woken by Morris with breakfast a couple of hours later.

He spent much of his time in writing and reading, and wished he had some ‘big history books’ wit him, although he cautioned that there was no point in sending them  out to him, because he might not get them before he had to move. But he was hoping to get ‘one or two of those compact little classics that I am so fond of’. Guy Mannering had lasted six weeks, he noted and now he would like ‘something like Carlyle or Aristotle – something nice and solid’. Of the ‘lighter reading’ type, something like Scott’s The antiquary, or the two books Pips had given to Bundy – Rookwood [by William Harrison Ainsworth] and Star Chamber [John Southernden Burn]. But really, any good book by any good author would do.

With Christmas coming up he was happy to leave the voice of present to Pips, although books would be good, as would some of the Xmas magazines. His mother would be making him some socks ‘and several like comforts’, and with all of that taken together he thought he would be ‘quite happy out here – or at least as happy as I can expect to be.’

[Next letter: 5 December]

Sherriff thanked his mother for the long letters he had just received from her: ‘I do think it good of you to write these long letters to me after you have been at the hospital from 8 in the morning till 8 at night.’ But she was now to get some time off, and he was sure she would appreciate it all the more because she had been working so hard. ‘Rest in bed till late,’ he told her, although ‘I should always go for a walk with Auntie…in the afternoons.’

He wished that one of the hot water bottles she was making was for him, although he was always quite warm in bed: ‘I wear my socks, pants and breeches, vest, shirt, leather jacket, woollen jersey, fleece lining, scarf and cap comforter. I get into my sleeping bag and cover over with two mackintoshes, so you can understand that I am kept warm alright.’ So warm, in fact, that he sometimes didn’t want to get out of bed – like this morning, when he had stayed there even while eaten his porridge and sardines on toast.

He told his mother about the walk around the trenches that he had taken the day before [the one he had told Pips about]: ‘It is interesting to peep down the dugouts and see here a little group of men sitting round a fire, playing a mouth organ, and in another one men lying down huddled up in blankets around fires and so on – it is a wonderful little village of rabbit burrows.’

She had asked if there was anything more she could send, and he told her that he doubted she could improve on her parcels, which were ‘really fine’. But as it happened there was one thing he should like: ‘and that is for you to make me a nice pair of long socks – almost stockings – to wear under my trench boots to come just up to my knees…it would be a nice thing for you to make while you are having your holiday and it would keep you quiet resting.’

Sherriff’s sketch of his trench bots. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/2/119)

He still did not know if he was to be relieved, and the uncertainty was having an impact on his work, for he found it hard to take much interest in it with the possibility of a move still hanging over him:

‘if I knew I was in the job for another, say, 3 weeks, I should start away and make all sorts of improvements to my surroundings, but when you are told almost definitely that the relief is coming off and you wait and wait for a messenger with a note , wondering when you have got to go you get very restless…’

But he would know soon, for the Battalion was due to go back into the line in a few days, and if they had not relieved him by then they would not do so until they came back out again.

His mind was obviously on home again, and he asked how things were going there, noting that he had heard that ‘Mr Lang of the sweet shop’ had been called up (but was on sick leave), and wondering whether ‘Fred or Toby Sexton…or any other well-known celebrities’ had been called. Then he started reminiscing once more, picturing his mother sitting up in bed in her ‘violet coat’, or riding home at night: ‘I love to go over the happy days [before parting] one by one, and although it makes me feel sad, it gives me pleasure to realise how well we spent every day.’

[Next letter: 4 December]

He told Pips that he had heard nothing for sure yet, but he feared that he and the rest of the East Surrey party might be relieved at any time.  He was sufficiently saddened at the prospect of saying goodbye to the RE officers he had met (‘who have been so nice to us…’) that he had spent two successive nights on duty at the mine so he could be with them. He may have been saddened as well by not having had any letters for the past three days, because it was rather a long way to send a man every day [the Battalion was no longer in the front line, having been relieved by the 8/Queens on 30 November, but instead was in Brigade Reserve in Philosophe].

He hoped that Pips was still able to keep the garden and the chickens in hand, and sighed that he could ‘imagine the dear old garden exactly as it must look now, with the frost on the lawn and the black looking trees and everything looking just like Christmas.’ He also returned to the subject of his father’s war bonus, commenting that ‘I suppose you are practically clear of debt now, which must be a nice feeling’.

An advert for Maconochie’s delicious stew.

For his own part, he had nothing new to report: ‘I am sorry I cannot put [in] any amusing incidents as I am still rather depressed at leaving this home we have here.’ Instead, he briefly rehearsed their daily menu – bacon & eggs in the morning, Maconochie’s at lunch (‘a tinned ration of meat, potatoes, beans, carrot etc [which] is very good – you just heat the tin up in hot water…and you have a fine stew all ready’), tea and bread and jam for tea, and a piece of steak for supper. As for entertainment – that was restricted to reading and writing, and taking the occasional walk about the trenches, which was what he was just about to do, to try to warm his feet up!

He knew not to hope for leave anytime soon – he still had another 24 days to go before his first 90 days were up – but at least that would mean that quarter of the year had gone by. It was frustrating not to know how long the war might last, but he had ‘made a chart of the days in one year – each day I carefully black in when it is done – one way of watching these beastly days of war go by’ [shades of Trotter in Journey’s End].

[Next letter: 3 December]

He was fretting again about possibly being relieved in the near future – something he viewed as ‘practically certain’, since he had been told as much by an Officer [though he does not say which one]. What annoyed him most, he told his mother, was that it might be because:

‘…our C.O. saw two of my men walking about untidy and he immediately concluded the whole party were like that – how I hate those two men for being such idiots as to be seen like that – it is perhaps also a bit my fault for not watching them more – but when it is in my power to make men’s time easier I love to do so as the poor men have such a hard time usually.’

Contemplating the possibility of his return to the Battalion seems to have sparked another sentimental episode in him, and he again reminisced about the walks he and his mother had taken together, as well as confessing that the nostalgic recollections of their last hours together had resulted in him ‘nearly [dropping] tears all over my last letter to you’:

‘I know it is very silly of me, but the more I think how hard you worked to make every moment of my time happy before I left, the more I feel so helpless to repay it properly: how you did everything in your power to make that leave one long run of happiness I know only too well, and how brave you were on the last day when you were trying to keep my spirits up…’

Dick Webb, from a cutting in Sherriff’s scrapbook. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/9/12)

Briefly turning to practical matters he enquired after his closest school friend, Dick Webb, about whose wounding his mother had included a cutting in an earlier letter: ‘Do you know how he is getting on?’ he asked. ‘I must write to Mr Webb and ask: even although he were wounded seriously I can’t help thinking him lucky to get home.’ [Sherriff was, at this point, sadly unaware that his old friend had died of his wounds in hospital on 10 October].

But before closing up the letter, there was a final burst of sentimentality:

‘What I want to try and tell you its how happy you have always made everything for me – no one could ever have had such a happy childhood, boyhood, office days and Army days as I did whilst you were always so near me to cheer me up and encourage me in everything, and I have always owed the greater part of my happiness to you dear, as a companion in walks, as an adviser when in trouble and as a comforter when I have been ill, and now is the time, when I am separated from you for the first time, that I look back and appreciate all this more than I have ever done before.’

H hoped that the time would soon come when he could return home and repay her by making her ‘as happy as possible’.

[Next letter: 2 December]