Cooper, Ethel – August 1916
6.8.16
My dear Emmie,
… On Monday little Herr Zalisz appeared – he has ten days’ leave, and looks a mental and physical wreck. He has been in the trenches for 9 months without a pause… he has been wounded 4 times, but it was never considered serious enough for the hospital. He still has bandages on an arm and leg. He says he has not one left with whom he went out 9 months ago…
We have found an excellent new food – it is a tinned extract of soya beans and is as good as meat, very nice in taste and very filling. And I have just read that a consignment of smoked walrus has arrived, and that it is both nourishing and pleasant in flavour!! We are going to the market early tomorrow morning to try and get some – I must eat walrus!…
13.8.16
My dear Emmie,
… The walrus isn’t bad! We bought a big piece, smoked and pickled, and one day it makes sandwiches, and another day it is stewed with beans and so on…
20.8.16
My dear Emmie,
We came back an hour ago from a long tramp in the country, with our pockets and my blouse full of stolen apples and plums! I nearly stole a duck, too – I could easily have got her, for she was waddling along in a narrow ditch, but Sandor vowed he saw somebody coming, so we waited, and in the meantime she got out of the ditch and through a fence – I am still regretting her… We took a goat’s cheese and a loaf of bread with us, and at a mill we got coffee, and later on at a little inn we got beer and had our supper. We do that now two or three times a week – I carry the bread and cheese and Sandor carries a fat book of travels in Spain, and we sit on the roadside and read aloud. We have gone mad about Spain, and if ever the happy day comes when one can get out of this country, and if I ever again have a few pounds to space, we are going down there for a couple of months…
Sandor got news… tey could get their passes signed, and so he packed and left yesterday. The flat feels empty and deserted without him…
