Acres & acres & acres of utter desolation

TCD MS 10247/1/838 folio 1 recto

TCD MS 10247/1/838 folio 1 recto

12 May 1917

Dear Mother,

I have a day off today and we have for the moment a fairly easy time so can start writing letters. I wonder did you get the two letters I have written since rejoining the battery. I stupidly forgot to letter them but they should have been [? II] of V and I’m not quite sure of the dates though I think they should be 3rd & 7th or somewhere about those dates – Just now there’s nothing much to tell except the usual constant pounding of the guns – One of our officers who was on special leave owing to some family affair has returned which makes things a lot better for us officers. – Yesterday I had a little run on the battery car to the Field Cashiers for the battery pay – it was the first time I had been out of the zone of activity since rejoining the battery and you really cant imagine the effect – When I came back from the course there was not yet any real green out though the buds had begun to swell, but now all the trees are in their first <full> fresh show of our good old green and all the fruit trees in blossom and the green fields and all. All this after waking up day after day to these acres & acres & acres of utter desolation without even a blade of grass as far as the eye can reach – all utter brown mass of waste only broken by the various wreckage of war – cast away equipment – broken rifles and all through it scattered about the little wooden crosses with perhaps a little inscription written up by a pal – well suddenly coming out into the full blast of spring seems like coming into a dream. – and driving along in the car – through normal country – with the fresh