Salisbury Plain

15 October 1914

Plymouth, Devon, England

Hello, Faith!

Our convoy has arrived safely (though we were re-routed at the last moment and the people here were not quite expecting us).* I am fine and so is Jerry.

We have just disembarked, so I have not had the chance to receive any letters from you yet (they can't cross the ocean any faster than we can). However, I will assume that you would like to hear about that handkerchief. Now that I'm safe and sound on solid ground again, I will tell you.

You are thinking that I stole it, but I did not!

Bertie Shakespeare Drew stole it.

I saw you drop it in the church aisle, but Bertie was sitting closer and got there first (the little sneak). Had I retrieved it, I would have promptly presented it to you and received your adoring thanks as my just reward. Bertie (being somewhat less chivalrous) meant to keep it! I kept watching him to see if he would give it back and he never did!

So the next day, I tracked him down and made him give it to me. All would have been well, except that Bertie did manage to land one good punch and I had a magnificently bloody nose. On my way home, I reached into my pocket and took out what I fondly believed to be my own handkerchief to clean up a bit. Imagine my horror when I realized that it was your handkerchief I was bleeding all over. It was quite ruined.

Well, I couldn't give it back to you in that state, and try as I might, I never could scrub it clean (I couldn't ask Susan for help, or I would have had to tell the story, though now that I think on it, Nan probably would have helped me — oh well, an opportunity lost). I did try — I washed it a dozen times, in all sorts of solutions. I even borrowed some chemicals from the chemistry lab. But the blue came out of the lace long before the bloodstains and I gave it up as a bad job. Please accept my belated condolences.

We are bedded down for the night in a school corridor. Every corner of this town is filled up with soldiers, and the transports are still half-full. I have no idea where they're going to put all the horses. But we'll be moving along to the training camp soon. I'll write again when we arrive.

In the meantime, I will rest my head against my kit and think of you (despite Tommy Fraser's snoring and Emile Gagnon talking in his sleep — in French, so I can't even eavesdrop properly). Write when you can. Not one of Nan's doorstoppers, if you please. But I am eager to hear from you.

Love,

Jem

XXX

30 October 1914

Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England

Dear Nan,

We're encamped on Salisbury Plain, though "afloat" is more like it. You never saw such rain! The ground here is chalky and won't absorb the water, so it just pools everywhere and the mud gets deeper and deeper every day. We march in the mud, eat in the mud, sleep in the mud. I have a new appreciation for what it must have been like when the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.

The marching isn't so bad, or, at least, it offers a bit more "scope for the imagination" than sitting in camp, waiting for your socks to dry — they never do. The other day, we were marching down a water-slogged road and I looked to my right and what do you think I saw? Stonehenge! Just there, at the side of our miserable, muddy column, those ancient druid stones rising up out of the mist, strong and proud. They weren't bothered by a little mud. It made me think of the people who built such a thing. I had never imagined them dragging those gigantic pillars through mud up to their waists, but now I will never hear nor read of the druids without thinking of it.

I saw Jem the other day. We have some freedom in the evenings and some Sunday afternoons and we met up in an old beech grove that afforded slightly higher ground. We spent a jolly hour carving our names into the beech trees.** Of course I carved yours, too, so now you must always know that there is a tree near Stonehenge with "Nan Blythe" carved as neatly as I could make it. Or, at least, that's what it said before Jem got his hands on it; now I'm afraid it is written up with my name and framed in a rather conspicuous heart, just as the Glen scholars used to write up names on the schoolhouse porch.

Some of the units here have mascots — dogs are common enough, but a few of the outfits have bears! I can't imagine what they did with them during the crossing, nor whether they mean to bring them to France. I saw one of the bears the other day — a little black cub that the boys in the 2nd Brigade call Winnipeg. She is cute enough and I suppose I ought to put this in a letter to Carl because he would appreciate it.***

I do wish you would send me something to debate over. Really. I thought war would be exciting, but so far it is mostly just wet and boring. I would give a month's pay to read something stimulating that you had already decided to disagree over.

Though don't let that stop you from writing the other sort of letter. You say it might be cloying, but I swear I'd be happy to drown in a letter of yours rather than in this mud. Just be sure to add a little bit of news in there somewhere — the fellows in my section generally read our letters aloud — or parts of them, anyway — and they'd tease me mercilessly if I told them the whole thing was too sweet to share.

Say hello to Faith and Di and Walter for me. I've written to Faith once or twice, but there isn't so much to say and I put most of my energy into writing you and assuring Father and Rosemary that I am getting along just fine.

Write soon, Nan. Don't wait to reply to my letters. Just write and write. I don't know why I ever told you different. I've only just now received your letter of the 14th and as glad as I am to have it, I can't wait so long for another. I know you have classes and social doings and can't write every day, but any day that I see your handwriting on an envelope is a day when I feel less sucked down in all this dull, ugly muck and misery, wallowing.

Love,

Jerry

2 November 1914

Aster House, Kingsport, Nova Scotia

Dear Jem,

You fought Bertie Shakespeare Drew? Over my handkerchief? I certainly never knew any of that, though I am quite entertained at the thought of you bent over a washtub, scrubbing my poor hanky until it gave up the ghost.

At the moment, things with the Reds are all catawampus, as Susan would say. Di has had a row with her friend Elizabeth Porter, and they're as icy cold as they were warm. They can certainly freeze a room and it's uncomfortable for everyone. Turns out that they don't sew any better without the talking either. I caught Di having to rip out a whole seam when she sewed one hem of a sheet one way and the other one the opposite, just like little Rilla.

Oh! We have had a letter from Rilla — it seems that she has named her baby (! ! !) James Kitchener Anderson, and they call him Jims. I understand that his father's name is James, lest you suspect that Rilla means to honor you with such an appellation. The "Kitchener" seems to have been Susan's doing. But in any case, Rilla seems to be doing a plucky job looking after the little fellow, so I can't tease her too much (to her face).

Walter is no better. He mopes about and hasn't spoken a word to me in months. I don't know what to do for him and don't really have the time to figure him out. Has he written to you at all?

I expect that Walter is glum because he's not strong enough to enlist yet. He seems in fine health to me — if he wants to enlist, he should march over to the recruitment office and have done with it. I suppose I would say that I often find myself wishing that I were a boy, so that I might have gone with you and Jerry, though I suppose that such an alteration would pose complications of its own. That being the case, I shall count myself content with present realities. I am getting along fine in chemistry — the professor seems to think I have a knack for it and I must have, as I hardly spend any more time studying this year than I did last, though the distractions are much less enjoyable.

All my love,

Faith

P.S. Whatever did become of that handkerchief? Did you throw it away?

*The Canadian Expeditionary Force was supposed to land at Southampton, but was re-routed at the last minute to Plymouth. The town was not ready for them when they landed on October 14, 1914, and the logistics were quite scrambled over the next several days.

**There are still living beech trees near Salisbury Plain with WWI graffiti visible on the trunks.

***The 2nd Brigade left Winnipeg ("Winnie") at the London Zoo when they went to France. That's where Christopher Robin Milne met her and was inspired to change the name of his own teddy bear to Winnie-the-Pooh.