Notes for Readers of Laurie’s Letters

1. Habitual spelling and other peculiarities:

            use = us

            minuits (or minuites) = minutes

            fell = feel

Laurie tends to use commas in place of periods and vice versa, though not consistently.

 

2. Abbreviations and expressions

bull ring = training ground behind the lines

Blighty [one] = wound bad enough to send soldier back to Britain

"blue cloths" = blue uniform worn by convalescing wounded soldiers, beginning with the Crimean War and continuing through World War II.

C.B. = confined to barracks

crumb = louse

green envelope = soldiers in France were issued one green envelope per month which could be sealed and was supposedly exempt from censorship. On their honour, soldiers were not to include any information about location, strength, etc. in these green envelopes.

I.T.C. = invalided to Canada

M.C.A. = Military Commissions Act???

mulligan = Irish stew (the term refers to North American "hobo" food, so it may have been used only by the Canadian contingent in France.)

napoo = dead; possibly from French "il n'y a plus"

limber = “the detachable front part of a gun carriage, consisting of two wheels and an axle, a pole, and a frame holding one or more ammunition boxes” (Google)

shin plaster = paper money

s.c.a. or S.C.A = Soldiers Christian Association

S.A. = Salvation Army

Tin Town = a local group of small shops

toot sweet = immediately; soldiers' French

V or Vi = Vimy Ridge

 

3. Undecipherable or unlikely words are typed in blue and followed by three question marks and enclosed in square brackets, e.g. [gergjs???]

 

4. Passages that make limited sense are reproduced exactly as is.

 

5. I have inserted material in blue (e.g., “fragment” or “page 3” or “no signature”) to make it possible (perhaps!) to locate missing pages.

 

6. The reader should assume that everything is typed exactly as it appears in the letters. I have used [sic] in blue and square brackets very rarely, where one of his slips could be confusing if the reader doesn’t know that it is Laurie’s mistake, not mine. He sometimes repeats or omits words; I have typed everything as is. Spell checker always alerts for repeated words, and I always check to make sure that it really was repeated in the original.

 

7. “Pages” refers to sheets of paper, not to sides of sheets – i.e., a letter may be written on 5 sides of 5" x 8½" paper, but I will list it as 3 5"x 8.5" pages.

 

8. Page sizes are approximate. There was apparently little uniformity in those days; 8" x 10" might be an eighth of an inch out in either direction on either dimension, and many of the smaller sizes are highly variable.

 

9. I have included the number of Laurie's words in each letter; someone may wonder, and it will not be possible to get an accurate total electronically, due to my inserted remarks, file names, etc. It will be possible to query Find, using the clue words. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to make the computer keep a running total of these figures.

 

10. I have filed the letters by date, in the format 16-01-02 (year-month-day). In general, Laurie used the format day-month-year, but for a short time in 1917, he dated his letters in the American way (month-day-year). I have marked these dates "[sic]" to explain why his date does not appear to agree with the file name.

 

Terms that somebody could explain:

“hold all and house wife you made me” (17-01-02)

 

Possibly useful references:

Saskatchewan Archives
reference Laurie’s letters 17-01-02 and 17-01-02 Otto
 

Compton Art Gallery, Chapel, etc. (17-01-11) 

 

Old Magazine Articles
Brock lighter for “bomb” (grenade) (17-01-11)