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or other food though, if you can manage it. The grub here is pretty rough, and sometimes when they move us we can go for days without rations. It’s silly but the one thing I long for is a big slice of fruit cake, the one the Mater makes for every birthday. It is strange how fancies like that take over. It’s harder than we thought, Pater. Much harder. But we will beat them. I feel sorry for any Englishman who isn’t here.
    Your loving son,
    Michael Macpherson

Chapter 4
    Hotel Egremont
    [location censored]
    France
    1 October
    Dear Aunt Lallie,
    I hope you are well.
    Well, we are finally here and all set up. I don’t know if I told you that there was already a canteen at Calais? So we have come here, instead, a bit further north and inland. It’s only a small town—a big village rather. The fields start right opposite the railway station so I can watch the cows (French cows and pigs are sort of sleepy) and think of home. It is slightly closer to the battle front here but absolutely in no danger , and a good place to be as this is the nearest railway station in these parts to the front lines. Themen get off here and are collected in cattle trucks, or else march if there are no trucks or carts available.
    Most of the soldiers are French so far. I never thought those irregular verbs would be useful! Though to be honest, I haven’t used one yet. I mostly stick to ‘ Bonjour ’ or ‘ Bonne chance, monsieur ’. The hospital trains also go through here to take men to the hospitals in Calais or Paris or over to England, but they don’t stop at our station so we don’t get any wounded men here either, just the troops heading off to the front lines.
    Ethel dragged us to every canteen she could find in London. (If you could meet Ethel you’d see that when she decides to drag you there’s no stopping her.) Her father will send us a shipment of bully beef, flour, cocoa and powdered milk twice a week. We can store it in what used to be the railway waiting room till Ethel persuaded the station master to let us use it. Ethel doesn’t speak much French yet, despite the best efforts of Mademoiselle at school, and Monsieur the Station Master doesn’t speak English. I think he gave up arguing with her out of sheer exhaustion.
    We need to store as much as we can as the troops and the wounded have priority on the railway and we can’t rely on supplies arriving regularly. We have the bread made here, but Ethel had to battle to get the bakers to take us seriously and give us what we ordered.
    The hotel is small and very plain, but it is right across from the railway station. I thought my feet were going to drop off the first couple of days, they were so sore, so it is good the hotel is close by. Madame is kind to what she calls ‘ les jeunes femmes anglaises ’. Monsieur is a prisoner somewhere in Germany, but her father helps and so do her two daughters and her grandson—when he is not minding his geese!
    Anne, Ethel and I share a tiny room. It’s got a little coal fire that’s never lit and hard narrow beds so it is just like school, and our maids are all in one other room, even more crowded than ours. We are still trying to convince Anne’s maid, Beryl, that Anne doesn’t need help to dress and wash and things. The poor woman is trying to serve cocoa for twelve hours at a time and still do all the regular maid work too! She even carried up hot water for Anne’s bath the other day! (We all used it after Anne.) But things have been sorted out now, I think. We work two shifts with three on each shift, one of us serving and the other two making the sandwiches or stirring the cocoa.
    Well, I had better go as we are rather busy. We served nearly 1 000 men yesterday. We give each of them a pannikin of cocoa, a bully beef sandwich and two cigarettes. Some of the men look younger even than we are. They are all eager to fight the Hun and it is good to think that we are finally doing our bit too.
    I had a letter from Dougie