[transcription and footnotes have been provided by the collection donor]
Friesdorf - Bonn, Germany
Jan 23/19
Dear Father & Mother:-
Thanks for letter received a few days ago. Have written you very often lately. Hope you get them all. We are having our first snow to-day and is very slight but very cold. I expect it will be a cold ride[283] back but thats the least of my worries as long as we start pretty soon. Expect to in a few days. Had a letter from Walter last night from Rhyl, Wales and he expected to embark the next day for Canada. He is staying a month in Toronto[284]. He will most likely be home by the time this letter reaches you. Well, it won't be very long before I am there. Went to Cologne last night and enjoyed myself very much. Went inside the big cathedral and it was just lovely. I asked Uncle for 2 British Pounds the other day and might ask him for some more soon. Thanks for paying my insurance[285]. Am in the best of health. Hoping you are both la meme chose[286].
Your loving Son
Rich.
Footnotes
[283] Pte. Richard Mercer rode a dispatch motorcycle when the Brigade moved into Germany in early December 1918 and the return trip most likely included riding a 'solo' motorcycle. The motorcycles were first the British 750cc Clynos and may have been replaced with Triumph motorcycles as of this date. Pte. Mercer commented on how superior the Triumph motorcycles were in the mud, especially in comparison to the American motorcycles he had seen by this time. Pte. Mercer was also riding a solo motorcycle during the October 1917 transfer of the Borden Battery to the Passchendaele sector of the Western Front as noted in his 24 October 1917 letter home.
[284] With Walter Wylie going to Toronto and later living there and Tom Tracy now dead, the boyhood "Theodore Inseparables" from Theodore, Saskatchewan are now reduced to just Pte. Mercer.
[285] His life insurance company since at least 2 September 1916 when he completed his Last Will and Testament at Camp Hughes in Manitoba and undoubtedly since he joined the Union Bank in 1914, was the Sun Life Insurance Company.
[286] Pte. Mercer has used perhaps the only French he ever knew.
