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28 Jan 61 Julius Fyzabad Father 10, Hyde Park Terrace ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fyzabad

28 – 7 –61

My dear Father

Your very kind letter announcing my promotion gave me, I assure you, particular pleasure.

Now that I have obtained my object, I really appreciate all the efforts by which the much desired wish was brought about.

Doubtless in my letters urging the matter on with you & John, I may have appeared not to have given you all sufficient credit for ‘working the telegraph’. If such were the case, you must put it down to my ambitious anxiety to get on which would allow me to see in no obstacle sufficient reason for stopping.

I can easily understand that there was considerable difficulty in bringing about a step which places me over the heads of five seniors, and to you, for the employment of so much means, both in the way of trouble & money, I am indeed grateful.

I have already thanked so many for congratulations & good wishes expressed on my promotion that as I speak or write to them time after time, they get more like a matter of form being gone through.

This I know you would not care about, so I will content myself by saying what I daresay will be as acceptable to you as any thanks I can offer – that I really am especially pleased at my exceeding good luck in being able to obtain my Company (even with the aid of so much money) at such an unusually early age.

I do not know anything that could have given me so much pleasure. Having obtained it, I will endeavour to show that I am in every way worthy of it.

I am sure you can easily understand after the kind & affectionate manner in which we have always been treated by you & my Mother that to please you both must be one of our first objects in life & if we can, by doing our duties in our respective paths of life in a straight forward manner, ensure or cause in any way your happiness. We should be peculiar branches of the parent stem were we not to do so.

As you asked me, I have written to Sir Peter & my Godmother – to the latter in reply to a letter received from her by the last Mail.

I should have liked to have held the Adjutancy a little longer as I think I could always get on very well with our present Chief & it is a good thing to get the name of being a good Adjutant. For the present, until some one comes from England to relieve me I must resume the office of M.I.* as the Colonel asked me & seeing my hesitation added that if I would, he should be much obliged.

But to say the truth, I am ambitious and if I see my way clearly, depend on it; the grass shall not grow under my feet. Out here just at the present there is too much uncertainty to make a move & I will take no step in the dark.

There is the Staff Corps which everyone fears – or for the present to stay with the Regt. Our Colonel is not likely to let any Capt. go away as, independent of me, there are only three at Hd. Qu. – so I take a couple of months Leave (if they will give it me) & go away to Nynetal & Mussoorie * on the 10th of next month.

The language is the root of everything & I have tried at it. I think this Regt. ought to be one of the best in the Service for the promotion of Junior Captains. I do not think I shall be able to get home for some little time. I would give much for a short visit to see you all.

I hope you are getting gradually stronger & stronger & that the picture I received of you was not a likeness. It makes you look a great deal pulled down. I am sure you will understand all the thanks I would wish you to, although I fear I express my wishes but indifferently – and believe me with love to all.

Yr. affectionate son

J D Laurie

* M.I. – Musketry Instructor

* Nynetal & Mussoorie – Now Nainital and Mussoorie, hill towns in the State of Uttarakhand, up to 330 miles north of Fyzabad