After another day’s hard marching in the heat Sherriff sent home letters to both his parents to let them know he was well. ‘I am writing this letter in a hut very much like those at Romford [where he had trained with the Artists Rifles],’ he told his mother. ‘We arrived after a fairly long march and I believe we rest the night here. I have not any idea what happens next.’ In practice, though, he had a fairly shrewd idea, as he told Pips: ‘We have nearly arrived at our destination, and will probably shortly move into a part of the line.’

After all those days on the march, he was now nearer home now than he had ever been, and the prospect of moving into the line seemed to have made him rather homesick:  ‘I often think of what I would now be doing if at home,’ he wrote to Pips, ‘and it is such a comfort to know that home is still there and not as some houses are like over here.’ And he was obviously trying to approach the imminent move philosophically, perhaps to steady his nerves:

‘I simply loathe the war [he wrote to his mother] but all the time I know it must end soon or something will occur to bring me home or that in dying there are no more worries at all – please don’t think I am trying to make you feel miserable – I only want you to think just as I do – to be prepared for anything that may happen – as I am sure you are and always have been…The country and trees are looking beautiful just at present – I hate going into the line even for the shame of leaving this lovely spring-looking country behind.’

He had no time to say much more, for he had the men’s letters to censor, and other duties to perform. But he reassured them that, while in the line, he would do his best to write home, even if his letters were brief, and written ‘under the most trying conditions.’

[Next letter: 15 May]