wanted to go easy with you we could send you down to Ft.  Leavenworth for 10 yrs.”  So I said “I wasn’t drunk sir and all the trouble was that I missed a train out of Chi and I didn’t miss it more than 2 minutes.”  So he says “Well 2 minutes and 2 wks. don’t make no difference in this game.  But you have been behaving yourself O.K. and we got a fine record in this Co. and I don’t want to loose no non commission officers because I haven’t got none now thats worth a dam.  So you see that you don’t miss no more trains because the next time it will go a whole lot different.  You are excused only that you won’t get no more leave for a month.”

So I said thank you sir and told him I was sorry because I was in a hurry to get to France and didn’t want nothing to come up to interfere with me going and he says “You don’t want to go no more then I do but it looks like we would all be here till we die of old age.”  So I asked him if the corporals wasn’t going ahead of the rest of the bunch and he says the corporals would go with the privates unless they was all shot by that time for being A.W.O.L.

So here I am Al and I have told the boys I was not going to quit them and I never seen nobody so tickled.  Well Al I am glad to in a way and on the other hand its a big dissapointment but a man has got to learn to swallow their dissapointments in the army and take what comes.

Your pal, JACK.

CAMP GRANT, Nov. 4.

FRIEND AL: Well Al they have begin to bust up our regt. and take men away from it and the men they take will get to France before the rest of us the lucky stiffs but they don’t send them right to France from here but they send them down south to the national guards camps and fill up the national guards with them and the national guards are going to get across the pond first because Secty.  Daniels wants to save the good regts. for the finish.

Well Al they can’t send me to France to soon but it looks like they wasn’t a chance for a man like I to get sent with the national guards because the men we are sending down south is the riff and raff you might say who we want to get rid of them so when Secty.  Daniels sends word that the national guards at such and such a place wants 7 or 800 men the officers here picks them out from amidst the kitchen policemen and the guard house.

It looks now like the real soldiers that they got here would be here maybe all winter but between you and I Al I got a scheme to beat that game.  I found out today that they are going to start a officers training camp here in Jan. and if a man makes good in it they will give him a lieut. or a capt. and they won’t be no riff and raff allowed in the camp only men that would make a good officer so I guess I won’t have no trouble getting in the camp and once I win my lieut. or capt. bars they will probably send me straight to France to take command.