AI Drysdale Father Letter

Tuesday
18th Octo.
1921

Dear Mr. Christison
I must apologize for not replying to your original letter, & for giving you the trouble of writing to me a second time. I remember receiving your letter; I put it aside to answer when I felt stronger, but have no [2] recollection of where I put it. I have been ill off & on for the last six months, & my wife has, but at our age (I am 76), we have to expect this. As regards Alick, I cannot do better than quote from a book devoted to a record of my boys lives – all [now?] dead – one R.A. another Indian Army & one Royal Navy.
“Alexander Icely Drysdale was born at Bournemouth on May 15th 1881, and educated at Dulwich College and at Messrs. Wolfram & Reedham’s, Blackheath, where he obtained a [3] commission in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the South African War in 1900. When war was ceased in 1902, he was at Simonstown for some time, and from there went on with his Battery to Mauritius. In 1906 he was appointed A.D.C. and Private Secretary to Sir Cavendish Boyle the governor of Mauritius and remained with him for 4 years. At the end of 1910 he came home, and rejoined his Battery at Gibraltar in 1911. [4] At the beginning of 1912 he was offered and accepted the adjutancy of the Ordnance College at Woolwich under Colonel [Burke?] R.A. & filled this post till the Great War broke out in August 1914. He was then appointed to the artillery at Berehaven for the defence of that important naval base, and for the training of officers and for the Royal Artillery.
Early in 1915 he was offered the command of one of the first siege Batteries, but declined it, as he had already promised to raise a Battery of Field Artillery in A Battery 87th Brigade 19th Division, which [5] he took out to France in July of the same year. On July 1916 he was reported “missing and believed killed” while undertaking a difficult and dangerous reconnaissance in the Somme Push – in Delville Wood I believe – and has never since been heard of aged 35 years.
Strike for the King, and if thou diest –
The King is King, & serve with the highest.
Tennyson’s “Coming of Arthur” and favourite lines of Alec. I hope the above sketch of Alec’s career will furnish [6] you with the particulars you require. I enclose one of his latest photos which kindly return as we have no more of them. He was then a major, & when he died was well on for his Lt. Coloneldom.
Yours very truly
A.T. Drysdale