Sunday 15th June 1913
Arthur and fellow Officers on Parade in Wimbledon; Territorial training in the heat of Southfields:
Arthur to Dollie
Belsize Grove N.W.
Thanks for your postcard which you timed alright for I got it last night safe and sound. To-day I did miss your usual letter: thank heaven it’s six days before another Sunday; I prize your letters so much. Yesterday after I wrote I went to tennis with Daisy. We didn’t get home until past eight thirty: Daisy had promised to play a set, which she didn’t begin until after eight and, naturally, I waited for her. We had supper a deux. How I wished I had been alone with you dear.
Then I went upstairs and cleaned my kit, as today we had a Commanding Officers Parade at Wimbledon. We went to eight o’clock Mass at the Priory and Communion, brekker at a quarter to nine and then to HQ in time for Parade in the Cumberland Market at 10. Our numbers today are 1006, which is really jolly good. We entrained at Portland Road for Southfields and marched on to the Common. We spent the morning practising Ceremonial for the 5th, then lunch – sandwiches, ham, tongue and cheese, fruit, apples and bananas, and plenty of shandygaff. Mrs Samuel, Mrs Moore and Moreing’s brother came and had lunch with us.
The afternoon we spent in strenuous Company training then home at five fifteen. It was a most glorious day but awfully hot and dusty. Pulman asked whether “Mme N. had left” so I told him. Then he wanted to know whether you had gone too. As to which, alas darling, I was only too well able to inform him…