Alma Russell Letters
Letters of British Columbia men on active service with Canadian and British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1918. Learn more.
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Northern France, Sept. 19/1915.
COPY
Dear N.F.,
You will be surprised not having heard from me for such a long time. The reason is not far to seek; as we have been fairly having one hell of a time since we’ve been in France. We have marched hundreds of miles in Flanders and N.E. France, were in the trenches within 2 weeks of landing at Boulogne and have been in firing line constantly since then. Indeed, except for short spells - 2 or 3 days at a time - we have been within a few hundred yards of germans practically all the time. We were in the support trenches after the big charge on the 16th. May, and got shelled like the blazes. We have been on some now famous battlefields in Flanders, but at the end of July we moved to an entirely different part of the line. I can say this much, I think, with the consent of H.M. Censor that we were holding and are holding a part of the line never before held by British Troops. According to the old Latin Savant, a word to the wise is sufficient. So you may guess by this where we are.
When we do leave the trenches for rest billets (usually 3 or 4 miles from firing line) we never get a proper rest as we are marched back to trenches to repair them, fill sandbags, dig communication trenches, repair barbed wire in front of fire line. We lose a lot of men on these fatigues as the germans hear us working and give us shrapnel &c.
We have been out here now nearly six months and what is the results - what definite gain has resulted in all that time? - absolutely nothing. Indeed it is most discouraging for us fighting men to be in stat qus all the time. Just here and there a few trenches gained, that is, 2 or 3 hundred yards of territory recovered. As far as the battallion is concerned, we have suffered heavily.
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 5 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Letters and associated items from Private Jack A. Gunn, 1915 - 1916.