“I haven’t heard from Maud lately, she doesn’t write to me half as often as you do. Say I believe if you had your own way you would be quite a matchmaker, go ahead, hop to it……”

This is a quotation from one of William’s earlier letters. And, until recently, I thought that was where William’s friendship with Maud had ended.

But no. As this letter hints at, there was more to come.

France,

June 8th ’17

“Dear Dorothy,

I received your letter a few days ago with the badges in. Thanks very much, they were alright.

I am back with the Battalion again. I got back last Friday, the Battn was in the line when we got back so we were sent up to them & we stayed in the line for three days. We just arrived in time for quite a lively time, perhaps you read about it in the papers. We took a trench from Fritz but he came back at us pretty strong & we were short of men so couldn’t hold it & had to withdraw to our old position but we gave him quite a wallop for we hear now that the Germans have retired from the position altogether.

We took quite a few prisoners, some of them were just boys, I felt sorry for some of the poor little beggars. We had them carrying out wounded & they were just all in. You could see the tears in their eyes as they worked.

Well I had quite a good time at the Corps school, I did pretty well. There was sixty of us in the sniper class & I was seventh from the top in shooting & ninth in general knowledge, map reading & such like so I think that’s pretty good for me.

I have got two stripes now, so when you write to me please address my mail Cpl Taylor [indecipherable]. If this war keeps on another fifteen or twenty years I’ll be a Colonel or something like that.

I got a letter from Maud two or three days ago, & what do you think she sent me a photo. That’s going some, eh. I am going to write to her just as soon as I finish this. I have your photo & Maud’s tucked away in my pay book  together.

I got a letter the other day from Laura, with the usual amount of snapshots, of things around home in it. This time it’s the new colts & all the school kids. She sends me some photos of something or other nearly every week so that I can see for myself how things are coming along. In her last letter she said that Dad had just arrived home with a motor car. He has been talking of buying one for a long time & at last he has done gone & did it. He got half way home & got stuck in a mud hole on the trail & had to walk home & get a team to go & pull it out so he made a bad start. The lord only knows what the finish will be. I am expecting daily to hear that some of them have got a Blighty or something like that.

Well they are sending some of our boys away on leave. I don’t know when I shall get mine now. That three weeks at the school will put me back some & taking stripes will too. If I had still been a private I should have been about first but NCOs will go in seniority. Some of the fellows are also being sent to a rest camp on the coast for about three weeks rest. We were talking about leave this evening & I asked the Sg major whereabouts I stood on the list & he said oh you had better go with the next bunch to the rest camp & I said to hell with that stuff I want to go to England. So I don’t know what will happen but there’s going to be a row if I don’t get my Blighty leave. I think I can get it alright when my turn comes for I have a pretty good stand in with the powers that be, so if I don’t stop a whizz bang before long you may see me around Leicester soon.

Say what do you know about Marian Beaumont, anyway. She is only a school kid or at least she was when I saw her last. I seem to have got you & the folks at home guessing now. Laura wanted to know the other day what that ring was on my finger. She seems to think some French girl gave me that. “Nothing doing”.

Well I think this is all this time so good by, give my love to Harold when you write. With love

Bill

P.S. I don’t know about addressing letters to Mesop[otamia] but I fancy it should be addressed to Army P.O. London and not to Mesop. I think that is the trouble.

Did I tell you some of my letters came back marked “contrary to W.O orders. I asked Bill if he knew how the letters to Meso were usually addressed.”

So, a letter from Maud and her picture in his paybook…..  He’s been dead almost one hundred years but I am quite ridiculously pleased for him. And, thanks to the recent discovery of two enormous and fascinating packets of letters between Dorothy and her husband Harold (William’s brother) while Harold was posted in Mesopotamia and Persia, I also know the story was not yet finished.