Somewhere in France
Jan. 3., '17.

Dear Lulu

We have heard that at last we are to be moved up the line. Of course it may not be true again, but this time it certainly looks as if we were to start tomorrow.

Of course I do not expect that you will be glad to hear of it, but then you are not a soldier, and have not gone through the process that we have gone through. Someday, by the grace of God, I hope to tell you all about it, but just now all that I can say is that I am very glad indeed.

For one reason, I shall get my mail most likely. I have not had so much as the scratch of a pen from a single soul since I landed in France. When letters are worth their weight in gold, you can imagine what that means. I can imagine a little heap of you letters lying waiting for me just behind the front line trenches!

Then again I have gone through in imagination all the horrors and heroics of the battlefield, a thousand times, and I feel as if I must get to the real thing. Who cares for a soldier who has only had a drill and the life behind those who are grappling with life and death? Why no one; and to lose the respect of those who we love is to lose more than life. Soon I shall know anyways, and I shall not have to depend on what the men at this camp say - those what have been wounded and sent here.

All the time we have been here we have been marching out of this camp daily about 7.15 a.m. on a long march with heavy packs, to a place over the top of a long stony hill, where we rehearsed all the tactics of modern trench warfare. We have all got tired of it. We come home footsore and weary, to wait in long lines for supper, and then back to the tents where we sleep packed together in muddy, wet clothes. The only real treat we have is to spend a few hours a night in a Y.M.C.A. hut; i.e., if you have no taste for beer in the "wet canteen".

Yesterday I had a real treat however. A young fellow who attended Wesley College with me, and succeeded me as president of the "Settlement House" in north Winnipeg, arrived from England and found me out. It was like a ray of warm sunshine. He is with me now, writing letters just as I am. He has told me what news he had from Canada, but of course he didn't know very much.

I suppose Digby just now is wet, wet, wet! I wonder what you are doing just now. I can imagine you sitting giving a music lesson to some little girl and having her go over some scales. Do you know that I feel as if I should never be clean enough to enter any more into a respectable house. I should need to be fumigated, and have every stitch on me burned. I wonder whether that conveys any meaning to you at all. I really had no conception of what soldiering was like until I came to France. Just imagine a soldier, not bright and polished, but mud bespattered from head to foot, buttons almost green, face unshaved, dirty and disrespectable, equipped not with brass and leather equipment, but with web the color of his dirty tunic, rifle and bayonet and heavy pack and haversack! You would disown me at once if you were wise. And yet that is the way men arrive in London, England, when they come home from the trenches for a brief leave! All seeming dead tired, and wanting nothing but to get to the home of their loved ones.

Tomorrow I expect to have to search around for a few things to take with me up the line, steal or borrow an extra tin of jam and half a loaf of bread; struggle desperately for a shower bath, have a shave; plead with a Q.M.S. for a suit of underwear, and then set out on a long trip for my new place. If it is true, I shall count the miles and hours when I shall reach my new battalion, the holder of all my delayed mail. If there should be none there for any reason, I shall die I am afraid.

Well I must stop now. Give my kindest regards to your mama and papa. I suppose they are vary anxious about Ainley. I have heard little about the 112th; some are in France I hear, and some are still in England. Where is your brother? Meanwhile I am getting acquainted with another Nova Scotian battalion.

Well remember me kindly to those who know me. Write as often as you can - the longest diary you like.

Yours Tom

P.S. My address is yet: -
No. 252656, Pte. Thos. W. Johnson On Active Service
102 Battalion, Canadian Contingent, B.E.F.,
Army Post Office, London, England.
(send the next registered).