January 30, 1918

No 1 Red Cross

D. of W. Hospital

A. P. O. 5.79

B. E. 7,

France

Jan 30, 18

Dear Mother & Father,

I received your cable of the 27th O.K., was very much relieved to hear from you since the fire. The mail has not come very regularly so I expect you have the same trouble.

This is a glorious day with bright sunshine blue sky and I have been wheeled outside in my bed and am enjoying it. The grounds of the hospital are beautiful and the hospital is a fine building.

Am getting on very well now and expect to be in England shortly. Will cable when I move.

My arm and shoulder will be as right as ever but will take some time yet before it is quite strong, though the wounds are almost healed.

I have not very much news so with much love to all.

Your Son,

Vincent

There is not a whole lot of information within this short letter sent home, but it is nice to see this sort of letter written home, just giving a quick update to the folks at home. It seems like quite a gap between the last letter and this one, and I am not sure if that is due to Vincent's injury, which from his records had him in pretty serious condition a couple of times during his time at the Duchess of Westminster Hospital in Le Touquet, France, or whether I am just missing some of the letters in between. As you can see from this letter, he is still in that very same hospital and waiting to be healthy enough to move to a hospital in England. Below is a picture from the hospital and here is the site I retrieved it from and it has some great information on the Duchess and the hospital itself.

Duchess of Westminster Hospital, Le Touquet, France

This letter I believe is written by a nurse, or someone that is not Vincent himself as the writing looks different. This could also be due to the fact that it looks like it is written by a fountain pen and not the pencil that I am accustomed to seeing him write in, but I think it is someone writing for him. Which would make sense, especially as we saw what writing with his left hand looked like.

There is not much else to discuss about this particular letter. If anyone has any information about the fire that Vincent mentions that would be very interesting. I would assume that it would have happened in Peterborough and to something somewhat dear to the Eastwoods.

As always the letter is shown below. Please let me know if you have anything to add or anything that I need to correct. If anyone knows what the letters and numbers underneath the "D. of W. Hospital" it would be greatly appreciated if you could share it with me.