France
Sunday Nov 28th 15

Dear Mother:-

I received your letters of Oct 24th and Nov 5th last night just as I was going on guard which I have just come off.

The weather is getting colder all the time but we are quite comfortable. The powers that be are so pleased with the job we are doing that they refuse to let any of us go back to our battalions so it looks as if we are down here for the winter anyhow. We have three blankets per man now and lots of clothes and we are expecting to get prospector's boots so we will be O.K, for the winter.

The two things that are scarce are grub and tobacco so you want to send some McDonald's chewing tobacco in the socks. It take 1/3 of my money to keep me in tobacco. The best part of chewing tobacco is that if you don't want all of it you can always trade it for smoking tobacco at a gain, in fact you can get 15 or 20 cents worth of smoking tobacco for 10 cents worth of chewing tobacco, so you might as well send chewing tobacco but disguise it to look like socks or tooth powder, then the mail carriers won't swipe it. So if anyone is crazy to send anything tell them to ship a pair of socks with lots of chewing tobacco in 'em, never mark tobacco on the outside.

In future address:

71513 Pte. John Row, Canadian Woodcutting Detachment
2nd Bridging Train Royal Engineers,
General Headquarters, France

That will save letters from going up to the battalion.
I had a letter from Mr. Adams last night wanting to know how we were getting along and sending regards from Mrs. Adams.

How did you come to hear that Billie Armstrong was being sent home?

Well dear this letter will reach you in Xmas season so give my love and wishes to everyone and here's hoping that all of us will be home next Xmas.

Jack