France
March 25, 1917

Dear Lettie

I received four letters from you yesterday, one dated Feb. 15th, 16th, 26th and Mar. 1st. It has been a month and two days since I received your last letter it being dated Jan. 29th so I don't know if you wrote one between that one and Feb. 16th. If you did I did not receive it. There was no Canadian mail come here in over three weeks. I received Alex's box about two weeks ago but I have not received a letter from him for a long time. I got your mother's letter and box some time ago and I got a letter from Mrs. A. Desson saying that her Aunt and her were sending a box to me so I got the box the next day. There was scones, a ginger cake, another light cake, a fruit loaf, a tin of salmon, some cakes of chocolate, a box of toffee. There was more to eat in it than any box I have had. There were four of us in a dugout and another fellow got a box from Aberdeen with the same mail so we had lots to eat. You know we always share up so you see I have done pretty well with parcels. I didn't know I had so many friends. I will have to be like one fellow that I know. He won't write to any one who won't send him a box. So you know what you have to do if you want me to write to you. You were saying that you had sent me a box so I will be looking for it. About these trench candles, well they are all right for keeping away the rats but for light they are no good. I suppose Eatons have a big stock and want to get rid of them. Well I don't need the socks but there is lots that does. I have more than I can carry around for you know we carry around all we own and it is no light weight either for we have some good long marches too. I was talking to Albert Roe about a week ago. He is in the artillery and is looking fine. He was near where we were a week ago. You were saying about not getting letters regular from me well I have wrote a great many more than I have received from you but there is times when in the trenches that the conditions are such that I can't write and you are lucky that you get as many as you do for I wish you could see the holes we crawl into and sleep. The mud is pretty bad just now and we have had some very hard frosts with snow a few days ago. We have just come out of the trenches for a few days. This is Sunday and there is no church parade today. We have a day off to clean up so everybody is scraping mud off his clothes for we get covered from head to foot and I did not have a wash or shave for a week till today. Not even my hands. I never thought I could rough it like we do. I have not had a touch of rheumatism yet and go to sleep with wet clothes on and lie on wet ground. You were asking me about that centre piece. Well I bought it in a dry goods store. They had one in the window that I was looking at so when I went in to buy it, it was gone so she told me they were getting in a lot from Paris and there was one coming the same as the one she had so that one you have come from Paris. I had a letter from Barbara and one from Maggie yesterday and I was glad to hear that you had a letter from father and got the money. He wrote to me and said he was sending you some so I wrote and thanked him. I will now close for this time. Hoping you are well. I will write to George in a few days so good bye for this time.

From Dave