Letter from Bill Wheeler

A page from a letter recovered from the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa in 2011.
Bill, a soldier with the 1st Devonshire Regiment, has been in hospital, but with ‘an Indian complaint which makes you turn yellow’ – jaundice. Now fully recovered, he writes to his parents that he was back ‘fighting those rotten tribes again’, giving a detailed account of the wounds of some of his fellow soldiers. As Bill puts it: ‘we are having as bad a time as them poor devils in France or anywhere else.’