June 10, 1916

BULLETIN RE PATIENT'S HEALTH;

Patient had a quiet night sleeping in all some 16 hours. Temperature, morning, 98.3. Pulse 72 and regular. Diet: breakfast porridge, sole, bread and marmalade. Lunch bottle of stout and custard pudding. Dinner bottle of stout, broth, fish, half a chicken. Temperature 98.3 pulse 76. Patient complained of
no pain and appears to take a lively interest in all going on about him.

- That is all for yesterday and today I am looking the picture of heath. They humour me by taking my temperature and taking my pulse, asking me if I feel a draft.

Well, I am going to England. The doctors came round today and checked us all. They told me my foot would require massage treatment which could not be administered here. I am not going to be hypercritical ---- . I'll get a lovely rest in a convalescent home and get two or three weeks of leave probably by then I will be fit as a fiddle for anything whatever fate has left for me.

I am at present most terribly anxious about the Battalion. Nothing was certain when I left except that our casualties had been very heavy and they had another day to go. I am praying that things let up for that day because the previous days experience had been most unnerving. I thought that the troops stood up magnificently but there is a limit to everyone's nerves. My nerves seem to get stronger when things are bad but when they are over I go like a limp rag. Fate has so far been blind enough to let me out of the trenches before my nerves have broken. But it is the one though that bothers me and they pretty nearly got me at St. Eloi.

This is a darn fine hospital. about 1200 beds and emergency accommodation for 500 more. The ward I am on is 1000 ft long and 20 feet wide, 15 feet high with 26 beds, 13 on each side. Each bed has an electric light, a screen, and a most convenient invalid's table. Two nurses and two orderlies and they are naturally kept very busy if the ward is full. Ours is not. Flanders? Hospital is within a mile and he has been across every day. No more dears. I will cable you when I cross to England.

Heaps of Love

Frank.