My train was jamed comeing back tonight and I don’t know where they got it but everybody was oiled up and celebrating about beating Camp Custer in the football game and I’ll say Camp Custer must be a home for cripples or something if that’s the kind of a football club they turn out any way I bet they ain’t no room to dance in the guard house tonight.

Your pal, JACK.

[Illustration]

CAMP GRANT, Dec. 4.

FRIEND AL: I guess I was so full of my swell visit home when I wrote you the last time that I forgot about telling you about that little girlie down in Texas.  Well Al they isn’t much to tell only that I got another letter from her though I as good as told her I wished she wouldn’t write me no more but she wrote any way and she says she can’t forget me and theys no use asking her to and she wouldn’t tell me where it was we seen each other and they was no use me asking her.  It looks from her letter like she was getting in deeper every day and I don’t know what will be the end of it all and if she done anything to herself on my acct.  I would feel like a murder though of course a man can’t help how they look or what a girl thinks about them but still and all you can’t help from feeling like you was to blame.

I guess the best way to do is just not answer her letter and hope for the best and hope she won’t do nothing rash.

Well Al I started out to write you a long letter but I am to wore out and I guess anybody would be after what we went through today.  It was the coldest day I ever seen so they picked it out for us to go on a 19 mile hike and if you could see the roads around here you would know what that means and they can talk all they want to about how the men suffers in France but I would rather go out in the middle of Nobody’s Land and start a mumblety peg game then take another of these dam hikes with the weather a million below zero and the road full of rutts as big as the grand canion.

If it hadn’t been for setting a example to my command I believe I would of pretended like I was sick and when you are sick they make somebody else carry your junk and leave you ride in a wagon thats O.K. for a private that don’t care what the rest of them think of him but a corporal has got to keep going and try to keep his men going and when you got a bunch of sap heads like mine it keeps a man on the jump to tend to them.  Red Sampson was so bad that I had to keep after him all the while and finely I pulled a good one on him I said “Sampson everybody in the whole regt. is out of step but you.”  So the rest of them give him the laugh but he can’t take a joke no matter how good it is so he says “I haven’t heard that one since they fought with spears.”  So I said “You get in step and show a little life or I’ll spear you.”

[Illustration:  Yes you are a fine Wife and Mother running around town and leave your Kid all alone (p. 134).]

Well its all over now any way and I don’t suppose they will send us out again till theys a big blizzard or something and then they will march us to Canada or somewheres for a little work out.