France
April 30th 1918

Dear Father:

Received your welcome letter of April 1st about four days. It was the first received from any of you since Evelyns of March 9th so any written since then must have gone astray. Did you send me a copy of a letter from Alderson Smith? If so I did not get it. Most of my other mail has been coming alright so far as I know. Send you a clipping from the magazine Canada about last December showing some ruins of a town we had been in. Did you get it? Do not remember any mention of it.

So you have been syrup making at Fergus. By the papers it has not been a very good year for it. Notice where it was even as high as $3.00 per gallon and I suppose it will be in demand on account of sugar not being quite so plentiful.

Notice Alderson Smith has sent a remittance of $12.00 but think he still owes considerable. Think I mentioned in a letter about three weeks ago about the amount he owed. Anyway, he paid me $4.00 when I was in Edmonton and the letters on the file will tell you how much he has paid since. He went into the house on July 15th 1916. Notice you have the Waltham Watch repaired and will send it soon. Charge the cost to my account. I got a new glass to replace the one in my wrist watch which was broken and it has gone good ever since. However can use the other one too as the wrist watch may give out and it is very hard to get them repaired over here.

I guess there is good money just now in wood in Canada as well as many other things but as men are scarce it will be hard to get it out.

We have a sandbag dugout here to live in, in the shelter of the bank of the ridge and it is very comfortable now since we have it finished. I was up forward to my old dugout in the cellar a couple of days ago and saw Marshall and some of the others. Think I told you he is the Medical Orderly and it is a good job for him as he is hardly strong enough to do the work on the guns as it is fairly heavy these days and steady. I was just getting nicely used to it when I came into the office. However like this work better and it is more interesting.

I saw Wright and Sanderson who were Officers with the 64th and came over when I did. They are in different batteries as officers close to where our billets are. Both are looking fine and I had a talk with them both. When I was up at the other billets heard that one of the Sergeants here had been killed by piece of a shell which exploded a few yards away from him. He was alone at the time. Only a few scattered shells came over shortly after I left here and one of them came handy to [?] was speaking to him just [?] I left. He was a [?]

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