TCD MS 11290/15 folio 1 recto
6th December [1917]
Dear Mary,
I have just got a letter from you and Mother containing a severe strafe from you which no doubt was most unjust.
Since I wrote home last we have covered a terrible lot of country and had a very strenuous time. For three days we trakked over a rich plain covered with mud villages mostly perched on top of hills. Here we got unlimited oranges about three a penny, luscious big Jaffas. We stopped a day beside a big village which I visited. It was very dirty and smelly, though not as bad as Egyptian villages. I bought pigeons and eggs also tobacco and a few dried figs which were very bad, otherwise nothing worth having in the town.
The country thereabouts was really very nice, rather like a park dotted all over with ancient olive trees. We marched there through rougher and rougher country till we came to a place which looks as if it had always been the haunt of robbers on the edge of the hill country. Here we halted a day and went on by night most of the way along a wonderful wide military road which seems to rise steadily for about ten miles. Unfortunately we could see nothing of the country except that we were generally in a narrow pass with high hills around us.
Towards dawn we struck off the main road along a track leading through the hills. At one point I caught a distant glimpse of minarets which were very cheering to us all.