Dear Mother: Aldershott, Dec 17, 1916

It is colder in this room than it is outside and I’ve been copying notes for about an hour and have about three hours of letter writing to do. I pity the boys in the trenches or at the base if it’s like this in France. I haven’t heard from Carman since he left Bramshott, but I had a letter from Bert Rivers who said they had some beautiful weather and were getting some good training, better than he had ever seen in Canada or England. They are in tents and it must be cold enough too.

We are in the midst of examinations and will finish the course on Thursday, Dec. 21st. If we get leave at Xmas or New Year’s I guess I will get mine at New Year’s and go to Ayr. New Year’s is a big Scotch holiday and Xmas the Christmas holiday. The 170th had been broken up and attached to the 169th so when you write it might be well to address as before and put a note in the corner "transferred to 169th".

Steve said in his letter that Rae and Isaac were coming home, also a letter from Edith. Oscar Rogers wrote saying that the staff of Fern Ave. school had sent two parcels, one for Carman and one for me. I wonder if there’ll be any tobacco in them. Canadian tobacco is far superior to anything we get here except "John Cotton’s" and English tobacco is an awful price for quality. No wonder they smoke "fags". Smoking is the only form of recreation or relaxation you get in the army.

I haven’t heard from Bailie, any letters I receive I always forward immediately to Carman. The latest Canadian letter I have received was dated Nov. 24th. It got here about Dec 13th or 12th. Have any of my letters been censored yet? Graham Paterson has been wounded and is in a French hospital.

With love to all, Cannon.

Notes from Carman: I met Bert Rivers and Harry Bellamy in Le Havre. We had reached Southampton and crossed in a little steamer from the Scottish waters, named the Duchess of ________(?). About everyone on the boat was seasick except Bill Buchanan and about half a dozen with iron stomachs. When you stepped into the latrines the ooze reached the point where your puttees covered the top of your boots. I gave up everything that could be conceivably be ejected through the mouth. We arrived in the early morning and had to walk two miles to the camp. There we were housed in bell tents. Our tent covered more than twenty men each night and that took some doing. We began to get used to a field kitchen. At the base there was a dining room where you lined up for breakfast with your mess tin. We got our bread, bacon, and porridge in the small piece or the top and your tea in the larger bottom half. They you marched two or three miles to the training area called the "Bull Pen" where you spent from 8.30am till 4.00pm training over courses which had been built. At the end of each course was an ambulance or two, except the musketry course. I fired fifteen rounds finally within one minute all within the inner ring. At noon we had the field kitchen which later was the way we ate when we were out of the front line. From time to time we would hear the ambulance screaming off to the base because some other group was taking the trench warfare course or the bayonet fighting course mainly. It happened the same way when we went over these courses. Someone wouldn’t take the precautions we were told about. The only time I was really scared was when we put on gas masks. We had to try the old ones and the new ones which later we wore suspended from a strap around our necks. I wore out a pair of Canadian boots in one week tramping or marching up the hill to the Bull Pen and going over the prepared courses. Our instructors were often 1914 men who could be distinguished by their shoulder patches, mostly blue, or by their leather leggings, and by the way the bore themselves. Once since we have crossing guards for school children I saw one old man on Royal York Road which I am sure was one of our instructors at the Bull Pen in Le Havre. It could have been my imagination, but I don’t think so. To write letters you went to the Y.M.C.A. or the church army huts. Eventually you went up the line. Our draft spent out two or three days before the New Year or two or three days after Christmas in French boxcars, marked "40 men, 6 horses". We arrived at Daubigny and then marched 20 kilometers to Mareouil which was behind the lines. Before we left, just as we were about to entrain, the padre exhorted us and prayed. He ended his service with these words, " Up the line boys, and the best of luck" (C.E.S.).