From Lt. AHM Copeland. Offizier Gefangenenlager, Augustabad bei Neubrandenburg

To Miss HR. Lailey – 26 Whitney Ave Toronto – Canada   May 5th 1917

Dear Hilda,

You have no idea how jolly it is to get your letters and learn that things are going on the same good old way in your part of the world. I can not give you news of real dinners and theatre parties; but might tell of a bang up meal of roast chicken and plum pudding, a French play which I could not understand, or musical entertainments of the Chinese orchestra variety. I won’t lest you fall into the error of thinking this a gay life.

As I sit on my balcony - more correctly our balcony as it is shared with four hundred spirits – growing fat, brown and lazy, I can watch some more energetic officers making a cricket pitch, kicking the football, or playing ground hockey as inclination directs. From my neighbors’ balcony on the other side of the house where it is cool and shady in the morning one looks across the lake to a line of small purple tinted hills (in Hamilton might be called mountains)

On some of the recent walks I have talked with a couple of old hospital acquaintances and laughed over a good many incidents anything but funny at the time to parties concerned but humorous enough now that they are over and we are well. Yesterday I saw a wild hare hopping across an open field apparently in no hurry until a small dog went off in pursuit; to-day, two small deer though within ten yards seemed as tame as if in a park and took little notice of us. Some of the hillsides are covered with purple, yellow and white anemones and at the end of the lake there are many marigolds. So you see this is not an uninteresting country altogether.

As for books there are plenty here. Have just finished Thackery’s “The Virginians and am now reading Tolstoi’s “Anna Karenina” and Thoreau’s “Walden in the Woods.” I think I have read more light literature in the last three months than in twice as many years previously. While in Stralsund I studied a little and think it is time to start again as all novels are beginning to seem so much alike in spite of the variety of authors that there is a temptation not always resisted to skip from somewhere about chapter six to the closing scenes.

For the last three days the sun has been shining and it has been as warm as summer. You may be sure the change was welcome and came none too soon for snow flurries and cold were the regular thing hardly over a week ago.

Am glad the news in the Canadian papers is good. Perhaps the wish is father to the thought but anyway I hope I may be home before many months are over.

Since receiving your last letter I have been anxiously waiting for the one telling of your Easter trip which I am sure you thoroughly enjoyed.

Yours very sincerely,
Arthur Copeland.