13/02/2019 HMB
My Dearest Father
Thank you very much for your letters and also for the handsome and generous holiday allowance which will be more than enough for my trip as the Red Cross pay my travelling expenses and keep me down there. I am going to Roquebrune, not to Cannes as there is a vacancy there on the 19th, so I shall leave here on the morning of the 18th, spend the day in Paris and catch the night Riviera Express. My address will be Villa Roquebrune, Cabbe Roquebrune, Alpes Maritimes, France. I get there on the 19th and leave again on the 1st. It will be a nice rest and a glorious opportunity for seeing the Riviera free of charge practically. The BRCS has these two places , one at Cannes, one at Roquebrune, (close to Menton) where they send their nurses for a change and rest. I shall hope to go to Monte Carlo, but I shall have to beg borrow or steal some mufti [civvies] as we aren’t allowed in the rooms in uniform!!
We have had about a fortnight of bitter cold and I got a little skating but it has been thawing for two days now.
I don’t know if I told you all about our gorgeous run to the Somme front: I think I did but if not tell me and I’ll write you a long screed about it. I am lunching with Fraser’s aunt in Paris on Tuesday, the one we saw about 3 weeks ago when we went to Paris. We are having much heart burning over dancing: there have been rows about it in some places and very strict new orders have come out that we may only dance in our own quarters. It is rather silly and all comes from some silly regulation that the Army Sisters may not dance. One of our girls broke her leg the day before yesterday tobogganing.
I have got such a lovely Boche helmet, camouflaged, from the Somme battlefield with a hole in the top where a bullet pierced it and killed the owner I expect. We are pretty busy just now and I think Fraser will have her hands full when I go on leave. We are very unlucky among the staff just now, Three are up at sick sisters hospital, one with a broken leg, one with slight congestion of the lungs, and one with a septic finger which has infected the bone : she will have to have part of it amputated I’m afraid. It is the index finger of her right hand which is simply putrid black. I have x-rayed her several times and the bone is very much eaten away by suppuration.
We don’t know yet when the hospital proposes to move but it will possibly be next month.
I must dry up now and go to bed.
Best love to you all
Ever your loving Dorothy
About Alford 