TUESDAY NIGHT, MAY 25, 1915.
I am using any spare time I have in carving an inscription on a piece of oak wood to put on a Cross on Allan Lawrie's grave. Did I tell you this already? I have got a small chisel and my penknife, but am getting on wonderfully with it, though it will take several days to finish.
FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 28, 1915.
I am still busy in spare moments working at the cutting of the letters on the plate for Lawrie's grave. It takes time, and, as Lawrie himself was an artist and drew well, I do not wish anything unworthily done to mark his resting place.
WEDNESDAY MORNING, JUNE 9, 1915.
Did I tell you that I finished the carving of the plate for Lawrie's grave last Wednesday, and we got it put up on the very day that we were ordered to leave that district? I think I did tell you that I was sending a rubbing of it to his father and another to his fiancée, and I am sending now to you the roughest possible impression of it. One is done partly with saddlers' beeswax, but it was so unsuitable that I had to stop it and finish with pencil. The ones I have sent are both better than these ones I now send to you.... I wrote a letter to Mr. Lawrie yesterday. I tried to write it as well as I could.
[FROM THE REV. J. MACGIBBON, C.F.]
I think the first of our Officers killed was Captain Lawrie... After Lawrie was buried behind the trenches, Captain Lusk procured an oak tablet to be placed on the Cross which marked Lawrie's grave. The carving of the inscription was a labour of love. The proper tools for carving were not procurable. He began with a penknife and latterly procured a chisel. Day by day he occupied his spare time cutting out the letters. Though his tools were primitive the letters were perfectly formed. When he had finished the whole inscription, his fastidious taste found that the surface was unequal. He ruthlessly planed this smooth which involved fresh labour in deepening nearly all the letters; yet he stuck to it working for hours on end, to make the whole as worthy as possible of the comrade who had trusted him. Then he made a rubbing of the tablet to send to Lawrie's father, trying first one process and then another and another, until he could get the best reproduction.
Three more letters will bring us down over a month of comparative quiet to the memorable events of the middle of June:—
FRIDAY NIGHT, JUNE 4, 1915.