SOUTH STAFFORDS WAR DIARY

April 25th Sun     Working parties on G.H.Q line, three reliefs of 200 each during the day.  

GODMOTHER MARY FOSTER: LETTER to Lance Corpl. SYDNEY HIBBETT & Pte BERTIE HIBBETT (included in Bertie’s 1st May letter Home with a pencil note at the top:- ‘Let Mother read this. Don’t forget.  I should like you to send her an Observer now & again’. He has underlined ‘Dear Boys’ and the first & last sentence).

259, Derby Road, Lenton Sands,                                                           Nottingham, England.                                             25 / 4/ 15

My Dear Boys,

Do you know I am getting very anxious about you.  I know it cannot always be easy for you to write & so I just hope that is the only reason.

I was greatly interested in your last letter in spite of the little news you are able to give us.  I was thinking about you in the Trenches at Easter & wondering where you are now.

You cannot tell from your surroundings that it is Easter in Scotland, everybody goes to business as usual.  We went to the Soldiers’ Service in Dumfermline Abbey at 9.30, but we had not even an Easter hymn.  The singing of so many men was very impressive & the kilts look very picturesque.

I was staying very near the new naval base at Rosyth. (1)

I hope you are both still keeping well & cheerful, & may we soon have you all at home again & peace restored is the fervent wish of those who have to stay at home.  I do hope you are having genial weather; – although it is the end of April it is today cold enough for snow here.  Now for the Epistle on the envelope.(2)

With the best of all good wishes

from Mary Foster.

If we had my father’s reply to this letter I am sure he would have sympathised with his Godmother over her loss of a quiet Good Friday and ‘not even an Easter hymn‘. he would have called it a ‘meaningful coincidence!’

(1) Naval Base at Rosyth was still in building: the first WW1 ship to be repaired there was the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Zealandia on 28th March 1916.

(2) ‘Epistle‘ i.e. the long Army address,

NEXT POST: 1st May 1915. Letter to Basil Hibbett on his 17th Birthday.