Stuk 47 - Letter from George to Ruth Mallory, c. 11 or 12 July 1916

Letter to Ruth Mallory written from France during the Battle of the Somme, 'July 1916'

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My dearest Ruth,

This is merely a note in advance chiefly to say that if you haven’t already bought the potatoes it will be better after all not to send them. We have discovered a way of getting them here.

I have just had breakfast after firing for 3 hours. We are very busy and I feel rather tired – chiefly I expect because these field guns make such an offensive noise. I believe our operations are going as well as expected – it’s a hard life in which one has to be reasonable. Will you send along parcels of the Times 4 or 5 at a time. It so often happens that for some days I see nothing but the Daily Mail and the Harmsworth popular press disgusts me in its present stage of rampant jingoism over ‘the great push’ than at any previous period of the war. The government is very largely to blame for that e.g. for the official photos. A picture of one of our guns as it stands in the emplacement with its girdles on appeared in the Daily Mail of July 5. This is evidently the advertising centre. O God! O Montreal!

The car is to start now. So au revoir till I talk to you again later on.
Your loving George.