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David to May  HOLZMINDEN       October 22nd 1917

My Dearest,

I have been reading over your letters again. Please tell me some of the other nice things that the chief said beside the fact that your department is to be practically doubled. I suppose it didn’t strike him to double your salary as well as your responsibility? You will have almost forgotten your holiday, but I am longing to hear all about it and about yourself generally. Please write more often.

By the way thanks very much for writing yourself to Taylor’s mother, I expect your letter would please her a great deal more than anything.

I am enclosing that official Receiver form, a letter to Mum and one to Cox & Co. I am asking Cox’s to send a cheque for £10 to Mum every month. When she has taken what she wants from it, will you please add the remainder to that other money, but first of all take a few pounds and get a Christmas present for yourself. Now do, please, because I can’t get it myself so I know you won’t mind.

In my last letter I asked you to get me some books. Would you mind getting me Laxtons Builders Price Book (Batsford) “Estimating” (this last in my bookcase) and the following from the “Everyman” Library, Carlyles French Revolution, Lockharts Life of Napoleon, Irvings Life of Mahomet, Macaulays History of England and Essays. Will you also send a list of the Everyman and Wayfarers Libraries.

By the way there are no less than six Taylor`s the camp and four of us have either D or H for our initials, so when writing be careful to put both initials and the regiment.

Please ask Mum to send the Builder and the Builders Journal once a month alternately. I expect the publishers will have to send them. I would send the book by post as it is more reliable than American Express and quicker.

Ethel, in one of her letters said that she read the report of our affair on July 14th. I wonder if you could get it and save it for me. Since I have been here I have come across several officers of my regiment, who, as soon as they heard of me, came and found me and who have been very good to me since. They have all been prisoners since the early part of the war. By the way, Mum asked me if I know anything of the Colonel. I only heard that one of the men saw him lying dead, but of course it was only a report and one can’t count too much on it.

Will you please thank Muriel Maconachie and Maud for their letters and ask them both to write again, although I can’t reply to them,

In one or two of your letters you ask which side of my head is damaged. I am sorry I didn’t say before, but I believe I gave you an account of what happened to me in my first letter. Anyhow its the left side, but its all quite alright now, except of course that I am still deaf and my ear rings a bit at times.

In another letter you ask if I would like another waistcoat – I would, most muchly. Your other one went up with the dugout and all my other things with it. I am just off to bed now – the time just before going to sleep and that before getting up are always by far the best times to me. You know why. Goodbye.

David