TCD MS 11290/22 folio 1 recto
1st March [?1917]
Dear Mother
No letters from home for a good while now but I expect a big bunch any day.
The weather here has at last cleared up after a prolonged spell of showery and cold weather winding up with a terrific douche accompanied by hail and thunder & which caught me nicely. Luckily I have unlimited clothes now and can laugh at a wetting.
We are very busy working at the road which has got very badly cut up and muddy but the fine weather will mend it quicker than we can. We have a large gang of natives largely women and children and all the poorest and dirtiest people I have ever seen. The women are the limit I cant get them to do any decent work at all but the men and boys aren’t bad.
I wish I could get a patent “shake smack & disinfector” something on Chicago sausage making lines I think it is about the only way one could deal with these filthy females.
All the same in some ways they are greatly superior to Egyptian women. They dont wear yashmaks and aren’t the least bit afraid to speak to anybody, least of all their husbands who dont appear to manage the heavy lord and master touch with any success at all.
Then one must make allowances for the fact that