30th Reserve Battn C.E.F. (2nd British Columbia Regt) Hythe

21st April 1916

My dear old erstwhile love and constant pal, I can't tell you how much joy your cheery letter gave me. Thought you had quite forgotten your old tillikam of pre-war days. My experiences in this b- scrap have been varied and on the whole not altogether unenjoyable. The old days of training on Salisbury Plain were not without moments of excitement particularly the weekend trips to town. We were exceptionally lucky as a mess in that we all managed to pull together although we were a very mixed bag and were living together under the most diabolical conditions that the weather God could possibly in his most liverish moments have inculcated. My saddest hour was when the regiment pulled out for France and at the last moment four officers had to stay behind and I put in a miserable 2 months at the Training Depot at Tidmouth. Even then however a few congenial spirits like Ross Cotton and Max Reed managed to foregather with good results as regarded the fleeting hour but disastrous in the preprandial hours of the following day. When the depot was moved from Tidmouth to Shorncliffe I spent a few days in this neighbourhood before going to France. I left Southampton on a Monday night, joined the regiment a week later having spent the interval at Havre, was

BC Archives, MS-0089 Box 1 File 4 GLASSFORD, Deborah Florence (Leighton). Vancouver Correspondence inward, 1916.