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Durham County Record Office: the official archive service for County Durham and Darlington

Transcript of Letter from Lieutenant Catford to his Mother, 1 February 1916

Please remember that all transcripts show what is written on the page; spelling and grammatical mistakes are not corrected.

(D/DLI 7/115/4)

"6th D.L.I B.E.F. 
France
  
February 1st 1916

My dearest Mother.
I am sending you
by this post a copy of our Regimental
Paper "The Whizz-bang", written &
edited in the trenches & containing a
caricature by yours truly. We are
having much colder weather out here
now as the wind is in the East.
The Situation is pretty quiet for the
part of the line. Last night we
had quite a "do" in my dug-out.
One of the Gunner Officers came
round to dinner & for the Front Line
Trenches in the most deadly sector
in the line Turtle Soup, meat & two
vegetables & Apricots & Cream washed
down with Whisky & Perrier Consumed
from glasses isn't bad, is it?
Of course this was one of the
occasions when my Mess Sergeant
[new page]
managed to buy me some stuff at
"P" & send it up to the Trenches. We
have a new man on the job now
& hope he is better than the last.
The greatest nuisance out here
is the lack of fuel. However I get
a couple of my men chopping up
wood & manage to burn logs in
my stove when it is very cold. I
have increased the number of my
Snipers & am going to get pretty
busy on the Germans shortly. I have
just managed to get hold of some
Armour Piercing bullets to put through
their loop-hole plates. Am going to
experiment on the Huns plates this
afternoon. How are you both at
home? Quite well I hope. You
might let me have Gerties address
dearest & I will write to her. 
Have you any of the portraits I
had taken at Tynemouth left?
If not I think I will have ..."