Harrogate Herald - 1st December 1915

Sergeant Simpson writes : 

22nd November 1915. I thank you very much for the paper I receive every week. What a task you have set yourself out to do. I, like others, look forward every week for it. Your weekly letter to your boys on service, bright, breezy, chatty, and the first read in the paper, by me, at any rate. I feel it must be greatly enjoyed by others as well. Letters from me cannot be at all interesting, being in a Labour Company at the base, but the boys are simply grand as they pass on up the line. Weather here very changeable, makes the road full, too, of mud, mud, and more mud, though the Royal Engineers are combating successfully against it. Good luck to them. They make it much pleasanter for the boys when they come across. May Xmas bring you joy in full, and health be yours always.

Harrogate Herald - 2nd January 1918

W H Breare letter

Sergeant Simpson, of a Labour Division, looked in the other night, and I was glad to find him in good health and spirits; but then he had his wife with him, so what would you expect? I cannot say anything more of Simpson, because I promised I wouldn't make a story of him. Yet I shall explode if I don't tell you that he has had as many as 500 men, under him, of a labour section.