Soldiers' quotes

The Ball brothers return to their
family in Bristol after the war

Quotes which are featured every now and again on the Home Page are retired here ...

MARCH 1917

'Monday we had about a foot of snow, there’s still snow all over the place, Tuesday, Wednesday were alright bar for a couple of light hail showers, but today has been rather miserable as its been cold and wet. I hope you are having better weather than we are as its either raining, hailing, snowing or blowing or else its freezing cold.' Australian Ernest Ainscow whilst training in Wiltshire, writing to his siter in sunny Queensland
 

SPRING 1917

'Sometimes I could see and hear three or four skyarks at once...the screaming of the shells didn't seem to disturb their singing at all.' Captain Harold McGill, France

JANUARY 31st 1916
'We have a nice black cat in our dug out and she sleeps in one of ou haversacks.' Private Stanley Goodhead, of the Manchester Regiment, in a trench on the Western Front.

JULY 18th 1917

'They get little natural summer here, not more than a very few days at a time ...’ Canadian soldier Raymond Bell writing home about the British weather while waiting in Sussex for a posting to France.

AUGUST 8th 1915

'Ted is out here but where I do not know. He is nowhere near me. I wish he was.' Lance Corporal Fred Silvester, serving in France with the 1st Surrey Rifles, showing how much he was missing his brother.

JUNE 6th 1916
‘Had such a nice walk to some French village and had steak and onions. We marched through the lands all red with red poppies.’Private EG Kensit, of South Africa, killed in action at Delville Wood on July 19th, 1916.