France; April 12, 1917

My Dear People,

Just a few lines to let you know I am quite well.

We joined our Battalion to-day but have not been in the trenches yet. It was on Easter Sunday that I first saw the destruction of war & I can tell you it is impossible to describe the mess they have made of this country.

There has been some snow & rain here lately & things are pretty sloppy. I saw Harry Tralaggan & W. Arnolds. Harry had letters dated 13th Feb. & he told me Mrs. Dare was married also that George was going to be married "Ha Ha". I saw Noel Tiver on the trip up, he was quite well.

During my travels in France I have seen the figure of The Virgin Mother & Child on a Church. The statue is leaning right over as I had read before I came here. We can hear the guns going for smash not far away. There has been some big advances going on lately. But I think there is a lot of hard fighting to be done yet. They have more N.C.O.s here than they want, so I have reverted to the ranks & in future my address will be

No. 4245
Pte T.J. Quinn
A. Coy
32nd Batt.

Of course if I live long enough I will have opportunity of rising again. Our Batt is in the 5th Australian Division & has done some pretty solid work at times. There are practically no French people here, but the French ladies I saw coming here are rather good looking. A lot of them were working in the fields. Well, I must close now as the censor will not allow me to say too much, but as long as you know I am well & happy that is all that is necessary.

Hoping you are all well.

I remain,

Your Loving Son & Brother

Tom

Hurdcott; January 31st 1917

My Dear People,

Just a line to let you know I am quite well. When I got back from London Friday night there were two letters here for me, one from Nell and one from Mum & Annie, dated Dec 11th 1916. That is the last mail I have got. I was very glad to hear you were all well, but was sorry that you were worried about my pay.

Of course that is the usual course for reinforcement sergeants, but I did not know it when I left. The reason is this - the rank is only acting & any big bug can revert you at any time if you are not up to your job. So the C.O. of a troop-ship generally reduces a few of his N.C.O.'s on the way over. Our Colonel reduced a good many. Well you see, if they were paying out C.D. pay while you were on the trip they would not know of the reduction in pay till you landed here & it would cause a lot of inconvenience getting it back. So they wait till they get the news from this end before paying it out. But I suppose you have got mine before this. It would be about £14.0.0 for the trip over. After that you will get no more till I am gazetted a sergeant so that I can make a fresh allottment.

It is the simplest thing to get reduced here - if you lose a prisoner when you are Sgt. of the guard, or when in charge of an escort, they court-martial you & then take your stripes off in front of the parade of perhaps a 1,000 men. So it does not pay to take any risks with prisoners here, as some of them are pretty hard nuts. I saw one Sgt reduced here. He was in charge of an escort & got drunk & one of his prisoners got away. So they took his stripes off & he is in the clink now, doing 30 days detention for his carelessness. So you see you have got to be right on the mark here.

Yesterday I was sent to Marlborough with a man as escort for a prisoner - it must be about 60 miles away. We caught a train at Wilton, a small town about five miles from here (we always catch the train there if we are going London way) & went up the London line as far as Andover Junction & then we had to take a train going on the Cheltenham line - to Marlborough. We had about an hour to spare so had a bit of a walk round the town. It is rather a nice place. We had a look at an old water wheel flour mill - the first I have seen. It was a good wide wheel about 6 or 8 ft wide & the water was running under it & turning it around.

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Australian soldiers are pretty rare there - as we could tell from the remarks we heard - but they know you a mile off on account of our hats. You are not allowed to wear your cap here & all the

English tommies wear caps.

We saw a big college there & a lot of the boys playing hockey. Well, after a bit of a stroll we went back to the Police Station & got our prisoner. He belongs to our Coy & came over with the 7/32, the same unit as H. Tralaggan. He cleared out of camp about a week ago without any pass or anything & got caught up at this place. I knew I would have to do some rum jobs when I joined the army, but I did not know I would have to do police jobs. I had a pair of hand-cuffs in my pocket but he came quietly so I did not put them on him. He got 28 days clink today for being absent without leave for a week. When you are Sgt of the Guard here, which happens here fairly often, you are something like a head jailer, with a bunch of keys locking & unlocking cell doors to let prisoners in & out. There are about 3,000 Australian soldiers floating about England absent without leave. They came over for the trip not to go to the war & it is on account of them that it is almost impossible to get leave except the four days London leave.

I will now tell you about what is said to be the coldest snap they have had in England for twenty years. When we were coming home from London there was a dry frost on with an East wind. The air & ground was absolutely dry, in fact so dry that the dust was blowing. But it was some cold I can tell you! All the water taps were frozen & a good many of them burst. The only place we can get water is at the warm bath house. The water buckets in our huts were frozen solid & after we warmed them over the fire a bit we could turn the ice out in a solid block. I have not seen anything like it before. For ten days the thermometer has not been above freezing point & there is plenty of skating going on about England. A good lot of the Thames is said to be frozen over.

The cold is playing up terrible with our men. A lot of them get colds & pneumonia & a good many Australians are dying over it. I do not mind so much, except standing on the Parade ground while the Battalion does a flash fall in. Of course when you have a rifle it is cold on your fingers so I bought a good pair of leather gloves (lined) in London. But it is cold calling the roll & we are not allowed to wear overcoats on parade. While I am moving about I do not notice the cold & I sleep warm enough at night, you can get as many blankets as you like, but I appreciate your nice warm socks that I have, but I would not wear a scarf as your throat gets too soft.

The climate here is ever so much drier than I thought it was; there has been very little rain here since I came here though they say it rains a good lot here a bit later on. The ground, in England seems to be mostly a few inches of soil over a rocky bottom. The farmers here use single & double furrow ploughs & they plough very light "scratchings". They are always manuring it with rotten straw etc.

They are making great efforts to organize the production of the country & orders came through for P.C.s to cultivate every inch of ground they had to spare for potatoes etc. & the millers have got to put at least 5 percent of oats or barley crush in their flour. British people generally wake up a year or two after they ought to. They are also short of sugar here. We get plenty of tucker here. The sergeants have a mess here. We pay sixpence a day & it is well worth it the way we are fed. They say we live as well as the Officers.

Sunday Feb 4th.

I have just come back from Church Parade. We have mass here every Sunday morning. The Priest is the best preacher I have ever heard. I am sending you a bundle of Post-cards views of London. I hope you get them alright. I was sorry to hear Aunty Ada had been ill but hope she is well again. I will be writing to some of them soon but I have been pretty busy since I came here. I do not remember the Miss Tothill that died. So Mr Davidson will be leaving Mt. Bryan. I hope they get a "strict" teacher in his place, don't you John? There is a rumor going round here that there are so few men enlisting that they are likely to close Mitcham & send the men to Melbourne & that all N.C.O. & Officers Schools are closed. I don't care anyway as it makes no difference to me.

Well, I must close now & post this as the Australian Mail closed today. Hoping you are all well as I am, except for a bad cold which everyone has here.

I remain Your loving Son & Brother

Tom.

It is snowing lovely here now.

Palace Hotel, Cnr Bedford and Bloomsbury, London; January 24, 1917

My Dear People,

Just a line to let you know I am quite well, as you can see from my address I am in London enjoying 4 day's leave. 

We came up from Hurdcott yesterday & must be back Friday night. It is about 90 miles up here from our camp. The tariff at this hotel is fairly high 6/6 for bed & breakfast, of course you can get it a lot cheaper than that but things are very stylish here & as I have a tenner to blow I am going to have a good time.


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I am drawing my extra duty pay of 4/6 a day here since I left the boat, so you should draw 9 weeks C.L. pay on my allotment for the trip over, but after I landed I have got to draw it here. They will not let me allot it to home now as it might stop at any time. But if I am appointed Sergeant permanent on joining the Battalion in France I can allot it then, as once you are gazetted a sergeant they cannot reduce you without a serious reason necessitating a Court Martial. As it is now you are pretty sure to revert for awhile on joining the Battalion. This means that I will be drawing 6/6 a day here which is far more than I need, but I suppose if I get too much I can bank it.

England is a very interesting country & London is a wonderful place, though I haven't seen much of it yet. The only thing I have against England is that it is too cold in winter, there has not been much rain here since I landed only light just a little snow. But the frosts here are very severe. It will come in with a little rain or snow & then a frost. Now in Australia, after a frost you get a nice sunny day – but here you do not, it keeps frosty all day & the ground & roads are all frozen & that slippery that you can hardly walk about without sitting down sudden. The sun rarely shines, if it does, it has no power.  It seems to be that if the sun does come out after an English frost, the air does warm up, the ground thaws & everything is sloppy.

I believe in March very cold winds blew but we have had very little wind yet. I saw in a Record I got (29th Nov) that you had a big wind storm home that blew Mackerode about. I hope it did not do any damage to your places. I saw in the same paper that Dave McDonald had been killed and A. Pohlner wounded. I have not got any more letters only the two the day I got to Hurdcott. I hope you got my cable & letter alright. Well I must close now as this is not seeing London! I am going about with my Corporal, as a mate he is a very nice fellow & it is nice to have a mate here. 

Hoping you are all well.

I remain your Loving Son & Brother,

Tom.

Hurdcott Camp, Salisbury; January 11, 1917.

My Dear People,

Just a few lines to let you know I am quite well & doing alright. We landed at Plymouth on the 9th, after a trip of exactly 9 weeks from Adelaide. After we left Cape Town we had a lot of delay, we called at a place called Freetown in Sierra Leone & met a lot of other troop ships & two cruisers: the Kent & Highflyer put in away from a reported raider. It is only a new base & we could not get labor to coal our ship. We had to do it ourselves. We worked shifts of 3 hours & loaded about 1,000 tons, those who volunteered first, 60 men from each unit got leave ashore, I was among them. 

It is a place with a population of 900 whites & 35,000 niggers who are real characters. I got

a piece of cocoa-nut under my teeth & pulled them out to get it out & absolutely astonished some of them who were standing by. Afterwards if I wanted to draw a crowd I used to pull out my teeth. I had several offers of a shilling for them & one nigger offered me two bob, but I wouldn't sell them.

 It is a very hot fever-stricken place & we were stuck in the harbor for four days when five ships pulled out with us, one an armed liner & we went on to Dakar, a French settlement on the African coast.

We spent Christmas Day there, we were there four days & there was no leave ashore, which made all the men very discontented, as it is a very tiring thing stopping in a harbor with no leave. We did not get off at Cape Town either. After we left Dakkar a few days later we met some other ships & the Kent who had come on from Freetown & our armed liner left us & we were a convoy of nine A.I.F. troop-ships, with the Kent as escort & a French cruiser who came out from Dakar with us not far away & each troop ship had a gun mounted astern (we got ours at Dakar) to deal with submarines but we never saw any. 

HMAS Kent  from http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-00-ClassInfo2.htm 

We had a lovely smooth trip till the day before we landed when a heavy cross sea struck us & we had a rolly time for awhile, which made some of our men sick, but I am proof against seasickness. 

We had two funerals on the trip, one man dived into a shallow bath on the ship & broke his neck, they collected over £100 (for his wife & children) on the ship. The other lad died from pneumonia. We had a lot of mumps on board, as many as 80 cases at one time. Noel Tiver had them slightly but I had splendid health all the way over. 

It was a very quiet trip over, but one day a Russian fool jumped overboard & caused a lot of excitement. A boat from another ship picked him up & we turned around & got him. He had a lifebelt on. The story was that he had a bad ear & wanted to see some other doctor as ours could not cure it, but after a day or so in hospital they stuck him in the clink & used to send two sentries with him whenever he had to go out.  

We used to have submarine drill pretty often & every man had to ship out wearing his lifebelt as soon as the alarm went. We all had places allotted us in boats or rafts. I & my fifty men were allotted four rafts to jump on in case of being sunk; we would have a lively time wouldn't we, when we were in the danger zone every man had his lifebelt with him all the time. 

When we arrived in Plymouth we were taken off in lighter's that night & trained here but we couldn't see anything as although it was moonlight they keep the blinds down at night on account of Zepps.

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After a march of about 3 miles we arrived here at half past five Wednesday morning. 

That morning I got two letters one from Kath & one from Auntie & Mum and was very glad to hear you were all well. I also got a Burra Record by the way, I would like you to pay my sub to the Record as it is due now.

Next day. 

I sent a cable home to you as I knew you would be worried as we were so long on the trip & we heard there were rumors that the Afric was sunk but I can assure you there was no truth in them. I hope you got the cable alright. It only cost six shillings, but you have to sign your surname to cables here or they won't send them. Do not worry over the money for sending cables as it is not likely I shall be short. I can overdraw on my pay book a tenner or so if I get stuck. I do not spend much.  We are to get four day's leave to go to London soon & after that they are going to put the training into us red hot as they are short of men at the front.

Sunday morning.

I went to Church Parade this morning, there were a lot of men there, this afternoon there is going to be a funeral. I think I will go to it. We went for a route march of 6 or 7 miles yesterday afternoon in full marching order, it knocked a lot of our fellows out as they are very soft after being on the boat but I can stand it alright. 

I am still holding my rank but I am not sure that I will get the extra duty pay here. I suppose you will find that out from my allotment. You do not get appointed permanently till you join the Battalion in France & if they do not want N.C.O.'s, then you have to go back to the ranks till there is a vacancy. With regard to my allotment you should draw 3/- a day & 4/6 a day extra duty pay for the trip over but if the extra duty pay is stopped you will only draw 3/- a day, just let me know if you are getting it alright. 

The drill here is a lot different from what we were taught in Australia, especially Musketry. Each Brigade has a training Battalion for its reinforcements & we are in D company of the 8th training Battalion - but you had better address my letters the same as before I will get them alright. 

I have been making enquiries for Frank Richards & he has been in hospital with a bad knee but is now in some Convalescent home, so I suppose he will soon be back here. Wally Arnolds has gone to France. 

This place is not too bad. We have nice huts and a coal stove in each. Of course it is very cold & we notice it after coming in off of the Tropics. The sun takes a mighty short cut across the sky here. It isn't daylight till about 8 o'clock & dark at half past four, but it will be better directly. This must be a lovely place in the summer as there are nice hills here and little villages. Funny, all the houses here have thatched or slate roofs & they are as old as the hills. I would go to Ireland for my leave only it wouldn't be much now in winter & the leave is too short - but I might get an opportunity later.

I suppose you are busy harvesting now. I hope it turns out alright & that you do not have too much bother getting it off. I get along first rate with my men & Officers. 

I must close now. Next letter I will tell you more about this place. I can only hope you are all as well & happy as I am. 

Your loving Son & Brother

Tom.

At Sea, November 24th 1916

My Dear People,

Just a line to let you know how I am getting on during my sea voyage. I am still very well and enjoying the sea splendid, we have had a lovely fine trip so far and we have not called anywhere since we left Adelaide, but we will be making port for coal within the next three or four days. I don't think the censor will allow me to say what port. 

Some of the fellows are very keen on getting off for a run but I don't care much, this ship will do me very nicely. The general health on board is very good, a few cases of mumps etc. but nothing serious. We had a dinner and concert in the Sergeant's Mess last night. I am enclosing the program and menu. On the menu area lot of gags at different Sgts in the mess. The concert went off very well but it was very hot here, it has been hot today - like Summer. We have mass on board here every Sunday, there are quite a lot of Catholics on board.

Saturday 25th. 

We are still going along, it is lovely and warm again today. Our mail closes tonight. So I suppose we will strike port tomorrow or next day. Some of the chaps have written thirty or forty letters since we left so I guess there will be a considerable mail. I have only written one letter card to you and this since I left, some of the stuff on the card might be struck out by the censor. When we were going through Pt. Adelaide, the little girls were holding up pieces of paper with their address on and instructions to write. I got four, but I won't write till I get to our training ground. We have drill parades on the ship but you cannot do a great lot, as there is not much room. But we do a good deal of lecturing. 

I suppose hay-making is in full swing over at Mt. Bryan by this. We have to put our watches back about twenty minutes every day; they alter the time on the ship at midnight so we get that much longer in bed. I do not know whether you will get this by Christmas or not but I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Hoping you are all well and enjoying yourselves as I am. 

I remain

Your Loving Son and Brother, 

Tom. 

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This is one of our ordinary breakfast menus, so you see it is our own fault if we do not live well. We have stewards waiting on us and generally live at about second-class mail-boat standard which does me very well. The corporals do not get many privileges on this ship. They have to eat with the men, of course this would not trouble me but some of them do not like it much, seeing that it is only bad luck that they were not allotted as sergeants. 

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A19

SS Afric                     -                    25th November 1916

Oatmeal Porridge

Smoked Schnapper

Jacket Potatoes

Grilled Mutton Chops

Boiled Cambridge Sausage

Mashed Potatoes

Irish Stew

Rolls

Jam - Tea

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