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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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BC Archives MS-1901

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On Active Service. France

October 17th, 1916

My dear Hilda,

Your long promised letter is at last in hand. It has been impossible to write lately for we have been marching all the time, being now many many miles from the spot from which I last sent a few lines. You will none of you feel sorry to learn that I know. We have done our share of the Push and are now in a part of the line that is so quiet that when one of our guns fires we jump and ask what they are doing it for. Isn't it funny, for the line is not (censored) away.

How we do hate these marches, they seem to get worse each day, lucky we have a good band to help us along, but the last hour or so is fierce. Now we have got to a nice little camp, good wooden huts, and hope we shall stay a long time. We shall take our turn in the trenches, but I dont think anyone ever gets hurt there, at any rate I never heard of anyone. It was about time the poor little (censored) had a spell.

I used to think when I was in that hell up there that I would like to write of the happenings of each hour, but as soon as I came out I found I could not write about it at all. We are winning because of our superior artillery and because Fritz dare not send out a single aeroplane to observe our positions, while ours go over his lines twenty at a time, but above all we are winning because of the marvellous courage of our men. They delight in showing Fritz how little they care for him, and when we went over to take a second

BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 19 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Letters from Cecil Harrow Unwin, 1916 - 1917.

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