So I said “They would have a hell of a chance getting information off me because they could kill me before I would spill anything.”  So Shorty says “You might not spill nothing at first but you would be a game bird if you stuck through all the tortures because when they ask you something and you don’t tell them they cut off a couple of toes and see if that won’t make you talk and so on till you don’t hardly know if you are alive but if you are game enough to stand all they give you why finely they will see what a game bird you are and then they finish you off so you won’t suffer no more.  But if you tell them all you know right at first they won’t do nothing to you only of course you will be a prisoner there in Germany till the war is over and they make you work your head off without no food and they don’t even feed the guards because they want to keep them mad at the prisoners so as they will make them work harder and every time you act like you was loafing or something the guards scratchs their initials in you with their bayonet.”

So I asked him where he got his dope and he says he didn’t know if it was all true or not but his wife’s 2 brothers was in the German army and they had wrote home about it and maybe it was all bunk.

Well Al I figured I would take Florrie to a show somewheres last night because maybe it would be the last time but after supper I felt kind of sick on acct. of the change in food and I asked Florrie if she would just as leave stay home so I went to bed early and I thought I would get a good rest but I didn’t get no sleep and as I said I couldn’t sleep this A.M. and now I am waiting for her to get up for breakfast.

I only wish they was some way for me to get out of this corporal and it isn’t that I can’t handle it but it seems like a shame to leave the other boys that almost worships me you might say and here is little Al playing on the floor and if his daddy was just a private I might maybe stay at Camp Grant all winter and come in and see Florrie and he every month.

Your pal, JACK.

CAMP GRANT, Oct. 30.

FRIEND AL: Well Al I am not going to France at all that is right away and this time I got the dope straight from Capt.  Nash and not from no Lahey or Sampson.

Here is the way I come to find out Al.  I was supposed to get back in camp Sunday night but I missed the train out of Chi and I took the first train yesterday A.M. and I got reported for being A.W.O.L., and that means I was absent without no leave so I got called up in the orderly room in front of Capt.  Nash.

So he says “Well Keefe don’t tell me your aunt died.”  So I asked him what he meant because I haven’t no aunt only by marriage that lives down in Texas.  So he says “Do you know what we could do to you for being A.W.O.L.”  So I said “I suppose you could bust me.”  So he says “Yes and that isn’t all.  If you was drunk or some excuse like that we could have you out in front of a fireing party or if we