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[Page 19]

Sorry I can't send you some some medicine for your growing plumpness that you complain so much about. I fear it myself lataer.

14th Field Ambulance
A.I.F.
France

24.8.16

My dear Mrs. Jack,

I have just got your letter of 24th June & sit down straightway to answer it for several reasons, amongst which is the fact that getting letters has made me so chirpy & bucked up I must find an outlet somewhere & work off generated energy in this way and also I must at least correct one very erroneous impression you have of me but more of that anon.

Of course this all implies how delighted I was and [indecipherable] to hear from you, letter for though I have been most exemplary in writing since I left Australia (a feat for me indeed wonderful) instead of being overwhelmed with correspondence as I should have been I have scarcely got any letters at all so that quite beside the delight in hearing from you the receipt of a letter itself is quite an event, either the P.O. has been to blame & I must say that the Military P.O. is the last word in ...ness & badly needs setting straight, an augean task, or else ah my former friends have learnt my sticky past & seek to discontinue my acquaintance. I shudder when I think that it may be so.

You say that even the minutest details of one's life is of interest to you, it is well for I'm going to give you a lot of this, but I should like also to take you to task for not letting me have more of your news, you said scarcely a word of yourself & did not even mention John & the son

[Comments in margin.]
Oh yes! What a greedy little pig you paint me when we first met of which you say have a memory, I spoke not from gormandization but from sheer absolute timidity & awe – true bill. I may not seem so to you now, I am still but try to mask it.

[Comments written across letter.]
Please tell Mrs. Bettington that the Blanket bag she sent me is the envy of the Ambulance, I find it quite invaluable, its my most precious possession. This will give you a puzzle to solve.

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