Back from the front line, in Divisional Reserve in Bully Grenay, Sherriff should have been happy – but, as he told his mother, his neuralgia had returned:

‘I am writing in my billet and I have not been out today owing to a return of my old complaint – neuralgia. It is funny that when I get a return of this I always get that awful nervousness again which makes me feel so useless to do any good work – when I am out I always feel I must listen for shells coming and every little noise puts me off what I am doing. It is such a trial, especially when you have to conceal it from the men…Don’t worry about this, dear, it can’t be helped as I do my best to overcome it, and if I can’t get rid of it I will have to see the doctor, it keeps me awake at night listening for these awful shells coming…’

He told Pips about the neuralgia as well – ‘a wretched complaint,’ he wrote, ‘that I believe you are subject to – it makes you feel absolutely done up sometimes’.

A couple of days earlier he had written home about the snowdrops in No Man’s Land, and now he was taking the chance to send one to each parent – freshly picked from just over the parapet.  He was pleased, as he told Pips, that things seemed to be going well with the war: ‘…everything goes to show that the Huns are practically done for’, but on the other hand the Germans had now taken to shelling towns behind the lines as well. He acknowledged the ‘present discomfort’ the shelling was causing, but he may have been understating his anxiety about it: he was usually afflicted by his nerves when his imagination got the better of him, and it is very likely that his neuralgia was at the very least aggravated by what he saw as the possibility of being randomly shelled while in reserve.

[Next letter: 4 April]