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]