Letters From the Front

                                                                        April 22, 1915

P.S. – I started this letter just before we were ordered out, so I finish it tonight. Len.

Dear Mother – I received your letter yesterday and was very glad to hear from you. Things are getting a little hotter around where we are now. Bullets and shells whizzing through the air everywhere. You can tell Clarence things are just as hot as what they put in the papers, about the battles. I guess you will have the news of the battle (April 27) we are in. We were four days dressing the wounded without a wink of sleep and we are back for a rest. The boys that were left out of the battle turned around and volunteered to go back at the Germans, again, after being in the battle for five days. I guess there isn’t many left of the Sarnia boys (poor fellows). They wouldn’t give in until there was hardly enough of them to make a company out of each battalion. There is a few killed and wounded out of our bunch. Some of them are from Sarnia also. I guess they are only wounded. We were all separated into stretcher squads and sent out to collect the wounded that couldn’t walk. If anybody ants to go through purgatory once they only want to be in a battle like this one which our boys went through. I think this battle is the biggest that has been yet. The Germans sent word across to our trenches that they were going to have their dinner in Ypres on the 24th. They must have meant lead, for I think they got filled up with it from our boys. Our bunch worked like heroes and there is some news that one or tow of us are going to receive a Distinguished Conduct medal. They certainly deserve it. When they double across field under shell fire after wounded.

            Well Mother dear, this is all I have to say for now. If I told you all the news it would take a newspaper to write it on. With best of love to all from your loving son,

                                                            L.F. Allingham.