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waters.
     
    ***
     
    England
    9 th September 1914
     
    Dear Pippin,
    Thank you for your letter and for telling me about the Staffordshire dog. Your Mam was quite right to say that you should write to me and tell me about your accident because it is better to be honest about something and not to try to be sneaky. Don’t worry about it. Accidents do happen sometimes and it is better that the clog injured the pot dog than it injured you. By the way, I don’t think that axident will be in my dictionary because that is probably a very old way of spelling it from when people used to hurt themselves whilst chopping wood with their axes. I think that accident probably has a similar sort of meaning so I think that we could use this word instead. Maybe the aniseed ball will look alright if we paint it so we will try that when I come home.
    We are on the train going down to Southampton at the moment. We are going to get the boat there and sail all the way to Egypt. We thought that the train had gone without Billy Murphy’s Dad after we had stopped at one of the stations but then we found him at the next one. He had been in another carriage collecting the names of anybody who plays rugby and the train had started to move. I don’t know how he thinks that we will be able to play rugby on sand, or whether we will ever have the time, so we will just have to see.
    Thank you for helping your Mam to whitewash the backyard. It will probably be nearly Christmas by the time that I get back home and the weather will not be very nice by then, so I am glad that you have managed to do that for me.
    I know that seems a long time to wait but just remember that I love you all to pieces and that you are all very precious to me. Hopefully the time will pass quickly and then I will be back with you again.
    Love
    Dad
     

Chapter 2
    Egypt, Winter 1914
    For the first three days the weather was bad and the journey was unpleasant – especially so for the Salford boys for whom the nearest contact with the sea had been a distant view from Trafford Road of the ships on the Manchester Ship Canal. The HMT ‘Neuralia’ was a 9000 ton passenger cargo vessel built in Glasgow and launched just two years previously. Its sleek 500 foot length and its two modern quadruple expansion steam engines were designed for mastery of the high seas but, unfortunately, its passengers on this voyage were not quite so well equipped. The transit of the Bay of Biscay proved a desperate trial for the Lancashire men who spent some days as almost permanent fixtures in their hammocks. Edward said his prayers and starved as a result of his total inability to face food, whilst Liam tried to remember his Hail Marys and struggled to climb back into his unfairly high hammock.
    Big Charlie discovered, to his misfortune, that the open mesh metal stairs linking the decks together carried an additional hazard on this heaving ship when vomit from suffering soldiers on the higher levels dripped through the flights on to any unfortunates at a lower level.
    For a while, Edward extracted some minimal pleasure listening to the desperate men prostrated around the deck who, believing that death was only moments away, were pleading forgiveness for a variety of intriguing sins. His own health, however, soon reached a nadir and even the entertaining diversion of the confessions failed to penetrate his consciousness. For days, he suffered the agony of the excruciating stomach contractions that ripped through them as he tried to eject the contents of an already empty stomach. The ship pitched and rolled, raised high into the air, sank gut-wrenchingly down into another monstrous abyss and the pale faces of the Salford soldiers grew greyer and their troubled eyes receded into dark sockets.
    Finally, already some days beyond the point when they were convinced that death was inevitable, they passed Gibraltar and the conditions improved. Now they were sailing across a sunlit, flat blue plain and white crested