The weather had turned cold again – it had been trying to snow and there was a biting wind – but the training continued nevertheless. He told Pips that, when the weather was very bad, ‘we retire into barns and give lectures – the training is very interesting and you get hold of very keen men sometimes’.

Pips had obviously written to him to ask how long they spent in the trenches at a time, but Sherriff felt he could not answer because the censor would be displeased: all he could say was that it was not quite as long as they used to do. He asked his father for more news from home – of men at the office, and of all the local news in the Surrey Comet.

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

Writing to his mother on the same day he thanked her for the letter he had received from her:

‘It is awfully good of you to write such long letters to me after your long hospital hours – please don’t sit up late to write, dear, even although I appreciate them so much – just a short note saying all is well when you are pressed for time’.

He apologised that his letters to her had become so ‘scrappy’ – but he found it hard to think of any news. He told her that all leave had been stopped, so his chances of getting home soon were ‘not great’ – but he was resolved to hope for the best, and just look forward to that ‘great time’. But at least, at the moment, home did not seem so very far away, with his letters arriving so regularly, and the countryside looking very English – ‘just like Shere or Dorking’.

[Next letter: 24 March]