France
Feb.20/17

Dear Cath:
I'll be jiggered if two weeks haven't slipped round again since I last wrote you, yet where the time has gone I cannot well make out. It always seems a long time from one Sunday night to another (for our mail usually comes in then) but when it comes to writing it's a different matter. However I'll try & make this an answer to both yours of the 22nd & 29th Jan. respectively.

First I must thank you for the Montreal paper - it arrived 3 or 4 days ago & I enjoyed it very much. So did the other boys. I would be only to glad to get one now & then if it won't be too much trouble to send it. I notice that they are going for the slackers pretty strongly. It rather surprised me to see it in a Quebec paper but I don't think it will do any harm for of the 4 provinces we passed through on our way to Eng. there were more young fellows hanging around in Quebec than in any other province. The illustration section too, was very good indeed.

No, Cath, there's not much chance of me becoming an aviator but it might surprise you when I say that Harry Bawden has transferred to the Flying Corps. Or perhaps it's stale news by this time. At any rate he told us when he saw us last month that he was going to try & work a transfer & not long ago Lawrence got a letter from him saying he had made it & expected to make a trial flight that day.

So the old burg is filling up with sailors now eh? Good. I know they look fine in their uniform. We saw a large party of Bluejackets leaving a big man-o-war to go on leave when we landed at Liverpool & they certainly looked great. It's funny to see them swinging along with their few little belongings tied up in a big bright coloured bandana handkerchief (or whatever you call it).

Well I don't know what to say next so I guess I'll talk about the weather for a while. You know perhaps that we have been having it pretty cold since Xmas but now I guess spring is about to set in. It has been thawing again & raining all day today so I s'pose we'll soon be ploughing around in mud up to our necks again. However there's some consolation in knowing that our friends across the way will be just as bad off & we'll make it our business to see that they are a whole lot worse off.

Well this letter seems a pretty poor one alongside of the dandy long one you wrote me last but it's the best I can do. I only hope you won't be peeved & start writing only a couple of pages. Your letters always are most interesting and as for me getting tired reading them - piffle, I'll let you know as soon as I begin to feel any evil effects.

Bon soir (that's more French),
Leslie