Document 9 - “Somewhere In France”

Letter from Charles to Dorothy, 7 December 1916

In early 1916 the Australian government recruited a new division to serve on the Western Front. Known as the Third Division, its ranks were filled with raw volunteers fresh from civilian life. Officers with combat experience were rare and as soon as Linklater recovered he took command of C Company (approximately 250 men) in the 33rd Battalion. It sailed for England in May 1916, trained there for six months and arrived in France in November 1916.

Charles wrote to Dorothy shortly after arriving at the front.

Somewhere in France
7 December 1916

We have been in France 2 ½ weeks now. We have been in the trenches 8 days and are out for a few days, we will be going in again in a few days.

We are billeted in a big town which has been knocked about very much, it is nearly deserted, but a few people still remain. Most of them just stacked their furniture in one room and then cleared out. There is some beautiful furniture in some of the houses and the houses themselves all shell torn and the roofs battered in.

It is very cold in the trenches but we can get 3 good meals per day and a good dugout to sleep in when we can, so life is much more pleasant here than Gallipoli. We had very few casualties whilst in the trenches but our snipers got a good few Germans...

I had not had my clothes off for two weeks, until I went to the Military Baths yesterday and stayed 1 hour in a warm bath. They have converted a huge brewery into a military baths. You go down there, take off your dirty underwear, they give you a clean towel and underwear in exchange, also whilst in the trenches you send down your socks, one evening and the next evening a similar number is returned. Men have to change their socks every day, that is the preventative of trench feet. There are a couple of hundred women darning and mending at the baths, but they do not scrub the officers down.

The house I am writing this in is run by a [French] woman of about 50 years, 3 of us are staying here, she treats us like her sons (she is all alone at present). When I come in she runs and gets a hot brick to put to my feet and runs and lights the fire. She cannot do enough for us, her son is fighting and her daughter is a school teacher. We draw our rations and give them to her and she cooks them, also adds a few extras, so we will have to give her 3 or 4 shillings each when we leave.

The windows are shaking dreadfully from the concussion of the guns. If you have any friends going to the war tell them to get in either the artillery, Army Medical Corps or Army Service Corps. Army Service men never get hit...

Source: Australian War Memorial Private Record 2DRL/0174

Ask Yourself

  1. Why does Linklater address this from ‘Somewhere in France’?
  2. How likely is it he omits other specific details?
  3. How does life on the Western Front compare with Gallipoli?
  4. What is the routine of trench warfare?
  5. What evidence is there of how the war is affecting French civilians?