27.2.16
My dear Mother
Many thanks for your last letter of good wishes for my birthday, and for the book from you and Father. That training home for blinded soldiers must be doing a very good and useful work. I expect this cold weather has kept you back a bit, but perhaps a good deal of rest is really better, I can read between the lines that is what your doctor wants you to have.
I’m sure you must all be missing Mary and Baby – I hear the little puss has distinguished herself by flinging a plate on the floor for her amusement! Mary will probably benefit by a change of air, I think she needs a fairly bracing climate: at Oxford and at Hereford I think she was apt to be out of sorts. It’s a great advantage to be born in a relaxing place and brought up there, you can stand anything then.
We’ve had heaps of snow all this week, it has thawed a good bit today and I think the cold is going soon.
This great battle is occupying one’s mind, and it will be a great relief if the next few days’ news is favourable, it is evidently a terrific effort by the enemy, and yesterday’s accounts looked distinctly ugly. Today is rather non-committal. I am disappointed but not very surprised to learn that all leave is now stopped. I don’t know for how long, so I may have another long wait – when it is opened again I should be eligible to apply.
Poor old Boo has bad luck, leave, and all that leave meant, seemed so near, and now I expect it will mean a long wait if he’s really off to Mesopotamia. He’s getting a lot of travelling anyway, and I’m glad to hear he writes cheerfully.
Please thank the girls for their letters, I’ll try and write before long.
With much love.
From your son
Arthur
PS - The Observer came today.
