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[Page 127]
London
28th Dec. 1915
My dear Judge,
Many thanks for your letter of 16th Nov. just to hand. I am glad to hear that you have seen my attempt at a diary for, although it is very badly written and quite a skeleton, it should give some idea of the trip across. After nearly ten weeks here was that part of the business seems very vague & distant, all interest being centred in the present and the future & I am glad to be able to write that my position is at last beginning to assume a definite shape.
A month ago, as you know, things were sufficiently unpromising to make me rather despair of doing what I initially hoped to do. But now it is different. I have been feeling much better after my rest down in Kent, and in view of this and i.a. the fact that they do not make it easy for anyone of military age to leave the country I have pushed ahead with my original plans.
On returning from Kent I "tapped" the War Office again & received a letter to say I was a suitable applicant & would be called in due course. This was just as indefinite as before. I called & saw the man whom I had previously interviewed; told him I could not hang round doing nothing any longer: if I went and learnt privately would they undertake to call me in the middle of my course. The officer was Capt. The Hon. I.G. Charters – said they would not call me before I had obtained my certificate, but suggested another course which he seemed to regard with [indecipherable] farm. That was that I should take "a commission in the infantry while waiting & be transferred to the R.F.C. afterwards when an opportunity occurred. This I decided to do as I felt sure the training would be very useful and also that it would be an advantage to go to a flying school as a Commissioned Officer rather than as a civilian. Charters very kindly gave me a letter to the man in charge of the infantry department and the latter said he would arrange matters for me. The result is that I have received a commission on probation in the Special Reserve of Officers and been posted to the 3rd Batt. Manchester Regt. This I fancy is something of a formality and I don't know whether I shall ever see my regt. And I am going to a school of instruction (O.T.C.) at Pembroke College Cambridge on Saturday next (Jan. 1) and hope that after the four or five weeks course there to be sent direct to a flying school.
That, then, is my present position and I feel that things are gradually working out the way I would like them to. If I do go to a flying school in February I should, with luck, be ready for the front by May or June & I think there will still be plenty of work to be done there.
During the last couple of weeks I have come in from Hendon & been living in London. Although the weather has been rather wet and not nearly as cold as we would expect at Christmas time, I have been enjoying myself in a quiet way and am beginning to feel the wonderful fascination of the place. I have been to a few theatres, one "The War Case" had quite a good Court Scene and murder trial, but the witnesses introduced their opinions