A letter has made its way from Lieut. Jack Smyth VC (15th Sikhs) in Peshawar in India.

26/6/16. “I am so glad May 18th turned out a good day and the boys enjoyed the whole holiday. I do indeed hope I shall be able to spend it with you next year.

I am up doing a signalling course in a little hill station, but it gets most unpleasantly hot here in the middle of the day, especially as we are only in tents…

This course lasts three months, at the end of which time we shall be tapping out the Morse Code in our sleep and sending messages at table with our knives and forks and otherwise getting really ‘signalling mad.’

We waive flags from 7-8 a.m., starting easily and finally working up till we are sending almost the whole hour without a pause and everyone has muscles in his forearms like a blacksmith.

Breakfast at 8 and then we sit on the top of the hill in pairs and read messages in Helio, Morse and Semaphore till 11 a.m., by which time the rocks had got so hot that one can hardly sit on them. There is then a stampede to the Mess to get a long iced drink safely by one’s side before the lecture commences. This goes on till 12 and keeping awake is the hardest thing I have ever known.

We then take pencil and paper and write down while the Instructor sends us telephone messages till 1 p.m. Lunch, and then we write up any notes we have made, get into pyjamas and sleep till 4 p.m., when three days a week I play polo and the other days tennis…

There is only one ground here and we have to play at 4.30 p.m. (very hot then) so that the men can get their games afterwards. As soon as the last chukker is over, the polo posts are rooted up and half the ground converted into a hockey ground and half into a soccer ground and the men get two inter-company league matches in on each ground before it gets dark.

It is the only flat bit of ground in the place, and when the soccer and hockey are fairly underway and the officers’ tennis courts and squash courts in one corner are going strong, the whole place is covered with flying figures ‘strafing’ various sorts and sizes of balls with different kinds of weapons.”

All so very different when compared with what our troops are currently facing in France at the moment, but it is good to know that Jack, who has surely already done his bit, is safe and well.