Same Camp.

(Not on the map.)

Dere Julie,

Many thanks, my cherrie (that’s French), fur the lovely cake you sent me, but believe you me deary, I didn’t get a smell of it.  I got the box about 6 p.m. opened it at 6;01, and at 6;011/2 our band played the Star Spangled Banner and all us fellows had to stand at attention; by the time they had finished, our company mascot, a billy goat camouflaged with a bunch of whiskers and an unshaven glue factory breath gobbled the whole blooming business.

Speaken of eats, the Gov’t certainly comes across with the gorging.  That is, there’s plenty of it, but the “maynew” is not as long as a search warrant.  But O, my kingdom for a plate of ham and eggs.  Ham is scarcer here than at a Jew wedding feast, and as for eggs, there ain’t no sich thing in the world.  I think that some of Bill of Berlin’s ginks in this country have been hanging up birth control “info” in every hen house in the U.S. least ways sumpin has happened to corner the market.

Well, deary, far be it from me to say how long this war will last.  I got a scheme to end it, so I’m gonna spill it to you, and here she is; Lock Theo.  Roosevelt and his three sons in the same room with William the Twicer and his seven sons; whichever cums out at the end of an hour wins the war.  You bet when this cums off I’ll hold a ticket on Theo.  Well honey bunch, I had a lovely dream last eve, I dreamed that you and me was holding down a park bench, with not a cop in sight.  I had just taken you in my arms, and touched your ruby lips, when I suddently awoke to find the captain’s pet sausage hound was licking my nose.  Some day there’s gonna be a first class dog funeral in this camp and that lop-eared canine is gonna ride in the head wagon.

It’s so cold down here that if a guy wanted a hair cut all he’d haft to do would be to wet his hair, leave his hat off, and break off the icicles, More Anon.

Yours until Lillian Rustle retires,

Barney.

P.S.—­I’d rather be a lamp post on Broadway, than a ten story building down here.

[Illustration:  “The Captin’s pet sausage hound wuz lickin’ my face.”]

In Camp C, W and H.

(Meaning cold, wet and hungry.)

Dere Star of My Heart,

Big day for us; we got our new soldier scenery—­a complete set from kicks to skypieces.  Did you ever see a feather bed with a string tied around the middle, or a bale of hay with the middle hoop busted?  That’s what my appollonnaris form looks like now draped in the togs handed me by the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”  The pants must have been cut out with a circular saw for a bow-legged simp.  I have to use a compass to find out which direction I’m going, and believe you me when I caught sight of “yours truly” in a mirror I looked like the end of a load of wood and just as handsome.