Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 389
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[Page 389]
20.7.18
France
My dear Mother Father & Sister
Just a couple of lines, there is very little to write about, you see the war has receded so far away that we could almost say it doesn't exist. We are in the lines & work up there almost every day but things are so quiet that it is almost a picnic.
My work has been rather interesting viz. - the investigation & location of old Fritzies dugouts, he was driven out of this part a few days ago & of course he left a heap of things behind, having departed "tout de suite" his trenches & positions are always interesting, every where one sees rifles, equipment & dead, the dug outs are full of odds & ends, books, clothes & the like & generally smell horribly, he is an expert at improvising dug outs under houses using the cellars, the more the walls fall the greater becomes the cover over the cellar. I was rather interested in a ruined village - it is a warren of dug outs - hardly a whole stick of timber remains & it is difficult to determine where the streets ran thro it, the church is a mound & not a single house is standing. By this time of course we are used to these scenes & they produce very little emotion or impression what to you would be awful & unique is rapidly becoming with