Dear May

I hope you will not mind me not writing before I have been so busy in the trenches, that we hardly knew what day it was. So I know you will excuse me. I expect you were all anxious, and wondering why you did not have a Christmas letter. I did send a letter on Christmas Eve, but it was not a proper Christmas letter. I scribbled it off in my spare time. I just managed to finish it. I have not had a Christmas letter yet, and it is 9.30 p.m. Christmas Sunday night now. I am expecting one any time from you now though. I know why I've not had a letter. I know you will all be very busy, the same as I was. I hope you had as happy a Christmas as possible, under the circumstances. I had a decent Christmas, but it was nothing like being at home. Still, I made a decent job of it.

If you do not receive a letter any time for a good while, you must not be anxious, you must put it down to trench digging, or night marches, or something of the sort. So you will know next time if you are a long while receiving a letter. You can expect me home within a fortnight. We are having 7 days leave. It will be a decent leave, won't it? I shall have time to have a good look round Wolverton, and have a jolly good talk.

I think I shall be able to tell you as much about soldiering as most of them. I've had two parcels, one from inhabitants of Wolverton, the other from a chap's uncle. This chap, who sleeps near me, likes me, and got his uncle, who lives at Brighton, to send me a Christmas parcel, as a kind of surprise packet I used to be unlucky at one time, but I seem to be quite lucky since I joined the army.

With fondest loveliest love from Albert x x x x x x