Private W Medlock DCM, 1st Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment

Please allow me a small space in your valuable paper for a short letter I give you the greatest pleasure to publish. I have several friends and old chums –I know not where they are now- who I know who would like to hear of my welfare. I wrote last November while I was at home wounded, and had a few lines from old friends who I had thought had forgotten me altogether as I have not lived at home for many years now. I am sorry to say I am in Hospital sick. I think this will be a worse enemy to fight against as the weather better than German diseases of all descriptions, which will be a little bit cut off Germans, and leaves the germs, but we all hope that this terrible war will soon come to a close for it is too awful to mention. Things don’t seem to have altered much lately, it has been the weather which has been keeping us back all the way along, but we will make them sit up later when we get a shift on – and something has got to shift one way or other before long at any rate. I hope it wont be too long for I think all the boys are anxious to get a move on too. They will make something shift, I can tell you, when the time comes for they are all in the pink of condition and waiting for the fray. They are British every one of them. I have come across North, South East and West, and all have the same old tale for England and the dear old Flag. We must not let it be trampled under foot. I doubt Kaiser Bill and Little Willie find out they have got too far in the mud, and when they get the Bulldog on their track, with the French poodle close behind, and not leaving out the Elephant who tracks rather hard with the Ostrich and Kangaroo who kick very hard when put out, with the Russian Bear – or more like the rushing bear by the way he is tracking along, – I don’t think Mr. Kaiser has the ghost of a chance. By the look of things you people at home have to content by the newspapers, while we have to be content with a few return shells at the enemy every now and then when he ventures out and I can tell you there is more than one watchful pair of eyes on his track, and the gleam of several rifles levelled at them, they have to be jolly quick if they escape the 303. But I will leave the fighting part of the business now, as it will tire the printer to print it, and I don’t want to take up much room in your paper, but I can say every man at the Front will do his bit the same as he has done up to now, and no one in England would hesitate to answer answer his country’s call if he could only see how much he is needed. So all shirkers, rally round the old Flag, don’t hesitate and say “ I will wait till tomorrow,” for to-morrow never comes. So boys who are Britishers and true Englishmen don’t hesitate, but answer you country’s call, for I have met several of the St Neots boys and others from all around the outskirts. One says “What do you think to it?” and they don’t really know what to say only “ I shall be glad when it is all over.” I know the whole world will rejoice at peace one more, for it’s not two countries at war, it the whole world, which is big to look at.
I must draw my short letter to a close now, as it is getting late and I am not up to the mark just at present, but hope to be about again shortly and at it again.