Pte Albert Carrington, serving with the Cheshire Regiment, described himself as "an old Luton milkman" when he sent a poem home to 2 South Road, Luton. Of his dear old shanty bivouac in which he was living on the Western Front, he wrote:

It's only some rags and canvas

Nailed to a blooming tree

There ain't no name on the fanlight

'Cos there ain't no fanlight, see!

It's a shanty knocked up quickly

With wire and bits of string;

It ain't no Buckingham Palace

And I don't feel a king.

For my bed, an old torn oilsheet

One blanket to roll around.

Where the 'chats,' the ants, the beetles

Find a happy hunting ground.

It's a spring - no, not a mattress;

It's the mud on Flanders floor.

As for mud, we beats the Navy,

We Somme-timers get washed ashore.

When the boys march past,oh, blimey!

'That takes it' you'll hear them say

But to me it's a dear old bivvy,

Where I write and sleep and pray.

There's holes in the roof from shrapnel

And in the sides as well.

Sometimes it's peace and quietude

More often it's perfect hell!

I love my dear old bivvy

For the things it does contain;

Photos fixed on the canvas

Of those I hope to meet again.

On the floor there's fag ends lying,

To waste them would be a sin;

Tomorrow I'll have to smoke them

With the end of a blooming pin.

Pte Carrington had volunteered for Army service in August 1915 and, after being drafted to the Western Front, saw action at Arras, Bullecourt, Ypres, The Somme and Cambrai. He survived the war and was demobbed in December 1919 with the British War Medal and Victory Medal.

[Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: February 17th, 1917]