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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by some general or other. As soon as the day's work was over I had to go out to the front line with a fatigue party. We worked carrying bags of chalk, that is the soil here, in the pouring rain till early morning and got back at two thirty to turn out again at six. Just as well it has poured all day and the inspection could not come off, for of course we were plastered with mud and chalk.
Charlie sent me a splendid razor and a most elaborate strop in a beautiful red morocco case. Just the thing for this life, it will be smashed to pieces in a week. Don't let anyone send me anything that I can't smoke, eat, or pepper myself with, unless it is socks. I can always do with them, one pair at a time. The pair you made were fine and just the right size, very many thanks. We get lots of wooly things, helmets and sweaters, but the socks are rotten and we seldom get them.
I was hoping the wedding cake would come to night for supper, but there is a hitch in the mail to-day so I have supped sumptuously off a piece of bread and treacle. You ought to see how we treasure up a little sopped crust of bread these days, our bread is always soaked with mud and rain.
I am also anxiously looking out for Mabel's cigarettes. Why does she not go to a tobaconnist and get them to send two hundred Players for a dollar, I think it is the best way. We have an issue of cigarettes once a week, two or three packets, I suppose they come from one of the funds, but they are the vilest things. I have had my mouth all sore and blistered from them, if we can buy Players we throw the others away. Someone wrote to the "Times" saying they were made of lilac leaves.
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 19 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Letters from Cecil Harrow Unwin, 1916 - 1917.