Yours faithlessly,
          Bill.

Mon Cherry Mable:

Thats the way the French begin there love letters.  Its perfectly proper.  I would have rote you sooner but me an my fountin pens been froze for a week.  Washington will never know how lucky he was that he got assigned to valley Forge instead of here.  It got us out of drill for a couple of days.  Thats somethin.  I guess Id rather freeze than drill.  Its awful when they make you do both though.

Two of my men has gone home on furlos.  Me bein corperal I took all there blankets.  The men didnt like it but I got a squad of men to look out for an my first duty is to keep fit.  Duty first.  Thats me all over.  I got so many blankets now that I got to put a book mark in the place I get in at night or Id never find it again.

We spent most of our time tryin to find somethin to burn up in the Sibly stoves.  A sibly stove, Mable, is a piece of stove pipe built like the leg of a sailurs trowsers.  Old man Sibly must have had a fine mind to think it out all by hisself.  They say he got a patent on it.  I guess that must have been a slack winter in Washington.  The government gives us our wood but I guess that the man who decided how much it was goin to give us had an office in the Sandwitch Islands.  I says the other day that if theyd dip our allowance in fusfrus wed at least have matches, eh Mable?  Im the same old Bill, Mable.  Crackin jokes an keepin everybody laffin when things is blackest.

[Illustration:  “BUILT LIKE THE LEG OF A SAILURS TROWSERS”]

I was scoutin round for wood today an burned up those military hair brushes your mother gave me when we came away.  I told her theyd come in mighty handy some day.

They say a fello tried to take a shouer the other day.  Before he could get out it froze round him.  Like that fello in the bible who turned into a pillo of salt.  They had to break the whole thing offen the pipe with him inside it an stand it in front of the stove.  When it melted he finished his shouer an said he felt fine.  Thats how hard were gettin, Mable.

I bought a book on Minor Tackticks the other day.  Thats not about underaged tacks that live on ticks as you might suppose, Mable.  Its the cience of movin bodies of men from one place to another.  I thought it might tell of some way of gettin the squad out of bed in the morning but it doesnt.  All the important stuff like that is camooflaged sos the Germans wont get onto it.

Camooflage is not a new kind of cheese Mable.  Its a military term.  Camooflage is French for cauliflower which is a disguised cabbage.  It is the same thing as puttin powder on your face instead of washin it.  You deceive Germans with it.  For instance you paint a horse black and white stripes an a German comes along.  He thinks its a picket fence an goes right by.  Or you paint yourself like a tree an the Germans come an drink beer round you an tell military sekruts.