Dear Father,
It is some time since I last wrote, ... so I wanted to get a note home, to let you know I am still existing, and in good spirits. We are right there now, and doing our little bit towards the ‘big push’, and what a ‘push’ it is. No one, not even the War Correspondents can describe the things that are going on here …
Alan Fry, 9 August 1916

‘At present we are camped in dug outs & trenches in a gully some 2 miles from the front line of trenches, ready to go up at a moment’s notice if needed, and are continually under shell & shrapnel fire. I never knew that there were so many guns in the world, till I came here. The place is absolutely bristling with them. All sizes & shapes, and it is an appallingly wonderful sight to see ... They shriek overhead, just like a terrific storm whistling through the rigging of a ship, though that doesn’t nearly describe what it is like here. No one can describe it.’
Alan Fry, 9 August 1916

‘My dear Mother, I am far too upset and sick at heart to say much Mother dear, for I have just had a telegram from Tommy which tells me Alan died of wounds in France on August fourteenth. I can find no one who knew him intimately round about and so I have to just think of him and turn my sad thoughts over and over in my own mind.’
Dene Fry, 17 October 1916