‘A year ago today I joined the Artists Rifles’, he told Pips, in the second half of the letter begun yesterday: ‘It hardly seems a year but in some ways it seems 3 or 4’.
He told both parents that he had been round to see the Battalion Adjutant [Lt C.A. (Nobby) Clark, whom Sherriff respected very much, and who would become a firm friend after the war] to ask about the chances of a transfer to the Engineers, but he ‘did not seem very hopeful about getting the Commanding Officer’s permission to transfer’. Sherriff was a little doubtful himself, concerned that the new CO [Lt Col T H S Swanton, who, while Sherriff had been away from the Battalion, had taken over from Lt Col H S Tew, who had been injured in a riding accident] might be annoyed by his request, and it ‘might make him say: “Who is this officer? What is he doing?” and change us round…’ But he was still hoping, and he told his mother, as he had Pips the day before, that he was now reading mining books in his spare time.
He had been thinking of Christmas again, because Bundy had sent him the Xmas number of Punch. The pictures of the snow reminded him of walking back home from school as it was growing dark on Xmas Eve [!], and buying decorations for the dining room and drawing room: ‘If only the war is over by next Christmas I should like to go through all this again, however silly it may seem.’
He had just sent a party of his men off to the baths, where they ‘get a good hot wash and a change of underclothes.’ He, on the other hand, had just discovered some lice (having felt itchy the night before): ‘it was my own fault for not applying that Vermin Powder before – as I did not think I was troubled by them I neglected it’, but remedying his mistake, he had applied it thoroughly and hoped it would ‘put a stop to their little games.’
[Next letter: 21 November]