My Dear Mother,

I am sorry my letters are so short and miserable but since I have been in the hospital I can’t seem to set my mind to write a good newsy letter. But I guess the trouble is I don’t see much to write about. This sure is a novelty me lying in bed with a thermometer in my mouth and trying to write.

The 53rd Battalion are here in camp. The 61st is at Borden a few miles from here but they are going to move here tomorrow. I guess Skinnie Willis is the only town boy in the 61st.

I had to stop writing for a while as I had to undergo 15-minutes daily agony while they were dressing my hip. Elliott knows what a good-sized abscess about the size of your head is like to dress. It nearly makes you sing Nearer My God To Thee when they jump that pure peroxide into it. Oh, it is lovely.

Well the 44th are all in France now, all but our section and signallers and I am afraid our bunch will be away before I can stand to carry an 80-pound pack all day. But I am hoping for the best. It’s 10 weeks tomorrow since I went sick. So you can imagine I am not strong as I have been. There were only a few days that I was between our brigade hospital and this one and then all I done was write letters and lie about.

I sure am glad you are not worrying too much about me as I am in the best place I could possibly be as they sure try to get the boys fit. But they made an awful muddle of my case. If I had the doctor I have now I would have been out weeks ago as he would have found out long before the other fellow did. I had to tell him and then he wouldn’t believe me. So he went for one of the other surgeons—the fellow who looks after me now—and he told him plump and plain that he wanted me at the operating room that afternoon at two o’clock. That was 11 in the morning, so I only had a few hours to think about it. I was not sick from the effects of it but was a little dumpy at first.

Your loving son,

Cliff