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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had to make at least four two hundred short journeys crawling on nobby lumps of chalk and dragging the heavy bags by the side of me. I could think of nothing else but getting that sniper. When the job was done I stayed behind in a shell hole and fixed my rifle in the wet clay pointing towards him, then each time his gun flashed I readjusted the aim till I had it certain, you see the clay held my rifle as I wanted it. I was very patient. I did not want to miss and it must have been two hours before the flash showed once more right in front of my sights and I fired. I lay there for another hour but he did not shoot again but I would have given a months pay to know the result of my shot.
By the way, I wonder Bairnsfather has never depicted how it feels to be standing up in No Man's Land when a big flare goes up. The only thing to do is keep quite still though one feels about as invisible as St Paul's Cathedral. That stand still game was no use on my beautiful sunken road that I loved so well down at the Somme though. There, as soon as a flare went up, every few seconds, the machine guns swept the road and the only way was to flatten oneself out on the road. Oh! I lay on some grisly things those nights. I am so glad Lawrie Mallory got the Medal. It is not easy to win. He was a nice boy, so fond of the kidlets, too.
I have just eaten my Sunday dinner - three dessert spoonfuls of beans and bully cooked together and burned, hope you are doing better than this. Why you don't eat those drakes of yours is a mystery to me if you keep them much longer they will be as tough as old boots. If you have, as I fear, run short of our original stock of runners you might get a setting from Mr. Darcey, Pender Island. Send him a card to see if he still has them.
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 19 RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 – 1964. Victoria; librarian. Letters from Cecil Harrow Unwin, 1916-1917.