Letter dated September 24, 1915, from Charlie Gray to his parents Alfred and Emily - Text
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Sept. 24th [1915]
Pte. C. Gray
My Dear Mother & Dad,
Just a line in answer to your welcome letter. Pleased to hear all are in the best
of health as it leaves us both the same. Sorry to hear about the boys not doing
much up west. Let us hope by now that [they] are hard at it. I guess Mr. and Mrs.
Shrubsall came unexpected. Hope they had a good time while they were with you. I
bet Dad & he did. You also said that you were going up to David & his wife.
I don't blame you. Have all the outing[s] you can
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get. We were surprised to hear they were getting out of the Heydon House the end of this month. I guess they are not doing much over there now. Fancy Fred's wife not sending him that money. You can bet we were pleased when we read Dolly's letter to say you were getting our money alright. I hope Amy was pleased with her brooch. I don't think you could have bought her anything else. I am expecting a letter from her this week. I can't make it out why we['ve] not had much mail this week. Your letter is the only one we have had. We are expecting to have a parcel from Beaty to_day. Who sent that parcel from Canada[?] Your[s is]
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the one I mentioned in the last letter I wrote that is the only one we have had from Toronto so if you have send any besides that we have not got it. Things are not so quiet this time in the trenches. Quite a lot of shelling by the artillery. We are waiting now for orders to get in the shell trenches if it gets too hot. I am writing this letter in our dugout with my kit on, so you can bet it is not very comfortable. I don't think it will last very long. We saw quite a display of fireworks during the exhibition, what with us and the Germans sending up the star shells to see if anybody were out in the front of our lines during
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the night. When they go up, we got to look & duck our heads down below the parapet. If you don't __ they will soon knock it down. I guess George Cox is having a easy time of it now. Charlie Goddard told me his Brother_in_law was expecting to leave the 15th of this month for England. I guess he has arrived there by now. I have wrote to Ern since he has been at Shorneciffe but had no answer yet. Well I think I have said all this time. With love to all,
From Your Loving Sons Charlie & Wally xxxxx