July 2025

13 Sept 1915 

My dear Lionel

I really cannot advise you to try for service over here.  It’s all very well Ernest and Monty joining as they have, jobs kept open, screws made up, wife and family alight  etc..  Joe’s or a bachelor, I’ve no kids, you have and have also had the responsibility of business as well.

Don’t think for a moment that you would have the same authority even as an officer in the sanitary engineers as you have on war office jobs as an independent expert.  I reckon you are quite as much if not more use as a thoroughly independent engineer looking after War Office jobs than as a junior or senior Subaltern  carrying out routine work.  They would have to make you a Lieutenant colonel war D.D. Something Inspector of Camp Sanitation to give the equivalent scope to what you have and are filling for them as a civilian.

There are quite enough race-horses pulling carts as it is without you being led into foolishness by the example of your brother or cousins!

You are not fit for active service as long as you have work and responsibilities in connection with the Government which cannot be taken over by someone else, quite apart from the family and the private business responsibility which are quite as binding in consequence of their indirect bearing on the State question.

So it just don’t worry yourself about wanting to kill Germans.  You and I are much in the same boat.  True, I’m in this country but my chance of shooting a German is about equal to a Tom cat’s of shooting the moon.

I’ve just got the better of an attack in my “centre” due I believe to the flies who flourish here.  I’m jolly glad I was inoculated!

As I’ve reached good quarters, a spring mattress and a well cooked food at last, I’m in a for fair way to losing the Tommy’s privilege of grousing, though we have always got one, that the Bosches haven’t got that sense to chuck it up and go home instead of keeping us out here.  But there!  The damn fools haven’t got the sense to (please excuse me while I kill a mosquito), thanks!  give in before they get hurt.

My addressee is SQMS Dibdin HQ office 20^th Division BEF France

Quite simple with no long foreign names in it to annoy the postman.

Honestly, old man, you are doing your bit just as much as if you wore Karki, and if you can only manage to convince Englishman that English patents and works are preferable to German, you will have done two big things in one, and leg up for proper sanitation and a leg up for English ( and Welsh ) trade.

And you can’t do that by coming out here to find trouble like the rest of us.

Young Stanley ( Lionel’s son) told me I wasn’t a proper soldier when I hadn’t a brown suit on and he informed me he wasn’t going to be a soldier himself.  He was going to be a policeman.  Daddy is a policeman.

So you are old man over a lot of things besides water tanks and nursemaid’s prams in the park!

You’re the policeman over a loss of blighters who’d sell the country’s cuts in the hope of being paid by German Jews.  Don’t be in a hurry to leave that job to a weakling or a fool.  You are neither when once you get up to sniff.  It is no small thing either nowadays to stand between a rogue contractor and he’s dirty profits!!  Some of them scamp the work when they get a chance and if you manage to stop any of that you will earn much in the future in the neighbourhood of Whitehall.

Now, then, never mind the damned old  humorous fool who ought to be muzzled.  Didn’t think I knew?  Eh?  There’s not much any snake doesn’t learn nowadays!

Much love from your affectionate Brother Rex.

Block 2
Private hospital
Sheffield

April 12 1916

Dear Leo
I do not see how you have to enlist at all.  Cadets are appointed, unless they have a new wangle for getting engineer recruits on the chance of a commission!  Anyway, don’t be in a hurry to pay the waiter before you smell the fish!  But now if you do get in as a Tommy - well engineer - NCOs are devilish well paid and in the higher grades are really well off, so good luck to it!

I’m doing the Government in for a new set of teeth and hope shortly to get my ticket; perhaps I shan’t and I shall get a new Billet, who knows?  I am hanging on here doing little or nothing, having got to my usual condition.  I’m staying there till I’m kicked out.  Good luck to you

Love to Cis and the kids from your affectionate brother Rex

A Coy ASC

Scotton Camp

Yorks

1 June 1916

Dear Leo,

Glad to hear from you.  Expect you do find it extraordinary.  But it’s part of the “training” to put up with minor “dirty” treatments even if one never loses acute sense of injustice.  You’ll get the better of it in a while, especially when they find out you are not a rotter.  At all events you are sometimes considered a gentleman and not always “dirt” so you are better off than an ordinary rookie or even an QMS!

Time, {at last} the Major has decided to forward my applications, but “when” will depend on the Dr. who says he has no hope of passing me as fit for “months”. Meanwhile I am on tonic and off duty and putting in time as piccolo in the new band of A company.

Incidentally the acting Company Sergeant Major and his satellites worry me and will until I see them through or frighten them badly.  It is disgusting to a lot of us who have been in France, Gallipoli and elsewhere to find ourselves the Aunt Sally’s for a batch of underdone Derby-dogs elevated to staff jobs in order to dodge active service.!  But the poor things can’t help it.  I have been made really angry over the damn parade at 6 am. the acting Sergeant Major says I ought to attend.  Never heard such a thing for senior NCO or men  off duty”; nor has anyone in this hut, SSMs and SQMs and SSgts.

But as a solitary specimen I was dropped on and SM  very rude and now I hope is meditating.

If he persists somebody will break badly.  I’m too ill to be b…ered about for a swank’s sake.  It’s quite hard work enough to have nothing to do but the polished buttons and boots and hang around till the mess bar opens!

This place is the WC of the ASC discharge depot.  You come here to be sent oft to K company Aldershot, for duty or sent out as permanently unfit or retained in a sort of catch-pit till you’re putrefied.  It’s a terrible climate.  January in June!  And there will be nothing for months to go to nearer than 4 miles away at Richmond.  One is kept to carry till 6.00 PM in case one would otherwise get a country walk!  Except Saturdays and Sundays

Richmond is a wall, hill, cobbles, a cinema, several shops, and a Jew auctioneer in the marketplace.

I have joined the cricket club, but it’s of no use to me.  More beef needed first.

Many times, I have wished I could get away to France or anywhere.  But time will see me chucked out I expect unless a miracle happens and I grow meat.

As soon as we heard K was lost, we told the orderlies to pack our bags ready for the telegrams summoning us to Whitehall.  Can’t and get up any enthusiasm!  God save the King!

Much discussed this morning as to whether polygamy will come after the war.  Butchers strongly in favour provided they get paid by results.  Families supplied daily if the bill is paid weekly in fact.

Well, I’ve pitched you the………..  I suppose I am bloody well off, doing nothing and paid for it!  But it gets on my nerves.  And put in all you know and get through.  Don’t worry but push when you have a chance to be a live man.

If I believe my soul gets frozen and my brains paralysed sometimes and then I wake up and sting people. Old Filon stung our Major in his letter to me -!  “Of course I shall be glad to have you as an officer, at all events you will be an intelligent one, scarce as refreshing fruit nowadays.  I am blessed with company comedians.   and (various  …  of BFS.

The Major’s face was a treat!  But it was a private letter and so I got it back and no trouble.  It was daring of me to show it, but it stopped all the down-talk!

Well so long.  Good luck.  Polish your engineering as well as your buttons.

Always your affectionate  Brother Rex

Abbotford

41a Abbey Road

St John’s Wood

Late 1916

Dear Leo,

Hope you are going on a okay.  I’m still here, Elsie being at Maidstone nursing Mont, and our moved indefinitely postponed.  Mont  was home on leave crocked up and they don’t know whether it’s enteric or not!

For the rest I am jogging along.

Joe was very fit in spite of his adventures.

I was glad to hear you joined in “Rest” so as to have a chance to get your bearings before going into the middle of it.

Not much news, except that civilian life is Ruddy rotten.  Seeing Joe made me want to be a damned fool and join up again.

Best of luck to you and take care to get anything good that’s going.

 Love your men and they’ll love you and so carry on.  Always your affectionate Brother Rex.

40 Elm Grove Road

Barnes

Jan 28 1917

Dear Lionel

I was quite sorry not to see you again. But honestly, I was really bad and the Dr. kept me at home.

I think the cold had got under my ribs for yesterday a muscle or something loosened and my chest was freely again and my heart stopped being oppressive.  So, I can go out again for a space.

Elsie reckons you came down on us with a scoop and took us off our feet and out of ourselves and altogether did us good.  And I myself very much appreciate your kindness, old man

You will be pleased to hear that I have a definite prospect of a Government job as “Stinks Sniffer” at the old game as Joe said when I transferred into the” Shit-Caterers”!

Rude of him, wasn’t it?

Apparently, now all you engineers have done your worst, we chemists are to have a smell round.  Good luck to it.  The more mess you’ve made the bigger the job for us.  Talk about us playing out one another’s hands!  Perhaps be Censor will understand that this is all fun and not an exposure of a terrible wrangle on the public!!  What!

Well, I reckon you’ve got the hot end of the war after all.  I thought I saw life in some sort, but you seem to have bagged the real bit we were only sniffing after.  Best of luck over it.  All the same and don’t mind me being jealous because I did not get more than my share of the dam show.  I guess my belly was full even if it was a small dose!