BX June 29, 1915

Saw Historic London Relics – Pte. Carl Apps Tells of Camp Life and a Visit to London

Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Apps, Mount Pleasant, have received a very interesting letter from their son, Pte. Carl Overy Apps, who left here with the No. 3 General Hospital from McGill University. Several weeks ago he was given a few days leave in which to visit London, England, from his headquarters at Shorncliffe, and in his letter, which is in detail below, he tells of his experiences and impressions there. The letter reads as follows: 

Pte. C.O. Apps, No 313
No. 3 General Hospital (McGill), C.E.F.
London, England

My Dear Mother and Father,

I am writing this in a small building set aside for this purpose a few hundred yards from where we are quartered. When I last wrote we were stationed in the Moore barrack, Shorncliffe, where we came to first after disembarking. We were there a week – that is, until a week ago yesterday, and then moved about a mile away to St. Martin’s Plain, still a part of Shorncliffe Camp. It hasn’t rained for a couple of weeks, which is unusual for this country, I think. Shorncliffe, you know, is in Kent, about 10 or 15 miles from Dover, and about four miles or less from Folkestone.  Our present quarters are more comfortable, consisting of tin shacks, holding about 45 men each, with the floor about three feet above the ground, with the beds along the sides and a door in each end of the house. There are short Sunday services held here at different times during the day. We have been supplied with canvas mattresses, which we can fill with straw from the cavalry quarters. I am not quite used to lying on three boards with a couple of blankets and my great coat over me.

Our beds consist of three boards each, each board about seven inches wide by three quarters of an inch thick and six feet long. I’m on duty to wash up the dishes, along with three other fellows, for our section C. Dinner is at 12 and supper at 5 o’clock; breakfast at 7 a.m. Reveille, which is the name given to the get up call, is sounded at 6 a.m. Everyone has to be in at 9.30 p.m. Ramsgate, where that Zeppelin raid a few weeks ago was, is not very far from here and we are right on the southeast coast.

It was a clear day yesterday and we had a route march in the afternoon. We were marching along a high cliff and could see the coasts of France over across the channel. A bi-plane cut circles near us, about the nearest I ever was to one of them, and I saw a British dirigible yesterday for the first time. We are getting lectures every day except Sunday now, on some branch of our medical work and also in bandaging and first aid, which is very interesting.

We were given three days’ leave last week to go to London, and I went up with two of my friends the evening of May 24. It is a wonderful city. I was all through St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. The cathedral is magnificent. I was down in the “crypt” where the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson are buried. It was very impressive. I was also in the room in the Tower of London where the two princes were murdered and where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, the spot where Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, the executioner’s axe, the block with the axe marks on it, the guillotine where Marie Antoinette was executed and on which 20,000 French people were said to have been executed in the French Revolution. I was through the great London Zoological Gardens and also the Buckingham Palace, St. James’ Palace (where Queen Alexandra stays), the parliament buildings, royal exchange, and the royal art gallery. We stayed at a respectable private rooming house run by Swiss people and saved a heavy hotel bill, as we were not millionaires. We got room and breakfast for 3-6. Our meals here are very poor and we have to get stuff to eat at the Church of England’s system of clubs for soldiers, where they sell bacon and eggs (mostly eggs), bread and butter, tea, coffee and cocoa, or doughnuts (English).

I must close for the present and get ready for the “cookhouse” after the men’s dinner. I’m finishing this after eating. We had a fairly good dinner and it was rather a surprise. I forgot to add that there were two little foot-rests to put under each end of the bed and that makes it a little better than lying right on the hard floor. It’s a little cloudy this afternoon and quite cold. It’s pretty near supper time again. I was at a short service in the Y.M. this afternoon. The address on the first page of this letter will be my permanent one, as the war office takes charge of all our mail and knows where to forward it to France or elsewhere.

Carl