September 10.
Back to camp again to-day. There is no one here and the cook says the boys have been working like the devil, so I suppose my turn is coming to-morrow. I wrote you letters from the north of France and put them on board a United States destroyer that was going home, but I heard yesterday that it has been ordered to England, so they will be a long time getting through.
I had a glorious time playing --- forgot all my troubles and tired feeling and enjoyed life hugely. Now it is "back to the mines" again, and the traffic on the road here indicates that there will be plenty to do.
Even after the ten long days there were n't any letters. Surely they must come soon and I need them. The air is thick with rumors of this or that about conditions at home and they are discouraging. Too much politics, too much waste time --- they've got to hurry.
And for myself the little undercurrent of longing is hard to stifle. This being with home folks and living humanly again, with the way things are going out here, is a little trying.
It was as I had thought --- we are in for an awful round of work. The boys came in last night panting from exhaustion, their faces caked with grime and their eyes running little rivulets of tears from the gas-masks' suffocation. They must have had them on an awful length of time---it's no wonder they smashed two cars so badly that it took us till daylight to fix them.
It was my "trick" to-day, all right. I was "cocky" from my vacation and I got into rows with two military policemen and got reported and everything. C'est la guerre. (It wasn't my fault, though, of course.)
This is sort of a snatched letter, but I imagine there won't be much time for the next two weeks. For the most part there is so little to tell that I write the letters more for the sake of letting you know I am all right.
Au revoir.
I've had no letters for a good deal more than a week, but I suppose such things must wait till after this attack. We are having trouble to keep the cars going and the roads are so crowded nowadays that there are dozens of little accidents every night --- collisions and such like that hurt nobody, but are hard on the machinery.
The section has been rolling twelve to eighteen hours a day for all but one of the last eleven days, and it took all of that one to get the cars in shape to go again. But I shall do as I am doing now as often as possible and write on the road while we are lying up waiting for dark.
It is quiet to-night so I can think consecutively, but it is not often so. Last night we were here and it was even hard to breathe for the air shock of the great batteries across the road. We are pretty close now, but except for five miles of open running in plain sight we are under the lee of a hill so it is comfortable enough.
The boys are behaving splendidly when we get in tight places. Last night when the Boche were shrapnel sniping at a parc, the bunch sat back and sang "A Perfect Day" and laughed. To-night as they are preparing to go on they are whistling, though they are hollow-eyed with fatigue.
Would there were time to enjoy the season here. Things are reversed and the rains which came so often have ceased. All is the most beautiful Indian summer. But we seldom see those things. The days are hid in clouds of dust and we move too hard and fast for sight-seeing.
You have heard, perhaps, or read somewhere, of the toast they used to drink in Germany to "the Day"---to the day when Germany should crush England in hate and set herself supreme as mistress of the world.
I may have told you of the toast that always is drunk when Canadians meet us and reach out a hand with a friendly "Hello, Yank!" that warms your heart. Then, and I have never known it to fail, the first glasses are raised to "the Day" when North America is joined together in victory. They are great boys --- those "Canucks," the premier fighters of the war and the best friends America has, and they mean it when they say such things.
But there is another toast to another day that I drank not long ago that I shall tell you of. The others were born of hate --- but this was drunk to love.
It was a day or so ago up front --- I had stepped down into an artillery post to watch the firing, and found a man who spoke English. We talked together for a time and I found that he had lived before the war in our town. And because in some things it is easy to go below the surface a bit out here, he told me of the girl he had left back there and showed me a picture of her in a locket on his breast. He almost cried, for it hurts like that at times, and men who are used to the sight of Death break down at the thought of home. But I understood and told him so.
Then he brought a bottle and the glasses from his bomb-proof, and setting them down upon the tail-piece of the gun -the one they called "Alsace"---he poured a toast to "the Day" when he and I should travel back across the sea, when I in one place and the brave Jean Giroult in another in the same great city should be at home. We were each to think of the other and be thankful.
It was rather dramatic the way he did it all, but it is their nature here and I liked him for it. And I shall try to remember in my happiness to think of him, for I shall get home first.
He --- poor fellow --- has been wounded nine times and twice given up as dead, but he had not given up hope --- and indeed why should he? He can't be killed, I guess.
To do the thing that's being done I suppose I should write "Somewhere in France" below the date-line, but that seems to be a bit too definite to suit the censors judging from the way my letters are not getting through.(*) At the time of writing this, however, I am in a very definite somewhere and there are indications that it may become "nowhere" rather shortly.
You see, they are working us so hard nowadays that the only time we have to write is when they are loading and unloading us in the ammunition parcs.
This one we are in now is getting to be a favorite target and the road into it has been completely ploughed up --- nice place for five-ton trucks to play around in.
The boys brought back hunks of bursted shell weighing up to eight pounds that missed them by distances of anywhere from forty to four hundred feet --depending on the imagination of the particular driver. But we are shot in both arms with luck --- we either come through just too soon or too late to get into trouble, and my particular section has only lost one car and no drivers. Not all the others have been so lucky, but we've fared better than the ambulance sections that were sent to Verdun. Those poor fellows have been literally shot to pieces. Maybe I am a bit premature in my optimism, for they got theirs in the last attack and our attack has n't come off yet.
But it may be that things will have changed before that time. The United States Government is to take over the service very soon for those who are willing to stay. It is rather difficult to know what to do. I should have very decent prospects with the Government if all goes well, having had good experience as a non-com. They now talk of sending all the sergeants to training-school and making commissioned officers of them. I am now a sergeant and have a clean record so far, so that I am in line all right.
Of course there are regrets about staying. When I came over I had hoped that the war would be well toward the end by the time my enlistment was up, and I had planned to go ahead at once with the beginning of my business life. This, of course, will delay that, although the experience gained may be in many respects equally valuable if I come through all right. And if I don't, of course it won't have mattered, anyhow. But that is a chance we all have to take, and it is n't, after all, the least bit terrifying. This is far from being a slacker job and things have been getting a bit tight lately. Mais --- c'est la guerre --- and the job has to be done by some one --- so why not me?
Frankly, we are a bit disappointed here at the way the draft is turning out --- the evasions and exemptions are too frequent for a healthy condition of the public mind; but one can't help feeling that it is not yet grasped. Our experience has taught us much over here that will be a long time drifting across the ocean, I suppose.
*[NOTE: The censor must have relented, for eight came through in the mail.]
The official bulletins for the week state that all is quiet on this sector. If this is quietude, what has gone before has been coma, and what is coming will be a good square chunk of inferno. We are working harder and harder every day in preparation for an attack and seeing the most excitement we have had since being here. The "Fritzies" have the range of our dépôts and they won't let them alone at all. Yesterday in an eighteen-hour run I saw two ammunition parcs go off, making a total loss of several weeks of work in about five minutes' time. Take it from yours truly it was some sight.
The first one was in the daytime when we were creeping along under the lee of a hill and could hear the whizz-bangs and big ones coming in up ahead. They stopped us in a woods about three quarters of a mile from a hand-grenade parc and told us to wait patiently for an explosion which might come off in five minutes or in as many hours, but which would surely come, for the place was burning rapidly. The explosion came all right.
Five of us had gone up ahead to watch the fireworks from a hilltop and had just arrived when the place let go. Up to the time we started down the back side of the hill, running had been in its infancy. Some one claimed that two Frenchmen who had been there with us beat us to the trench, but I doubt it. They had wings if they did. I thought that the thing would let go all at once and have it over with, but the explosion lasted nearly a minute and a half in one continuous roar and the air was filled with hot "fat" for nearly three minutes as a result of that law somebody made about all that went up coming down. I collected a few samples that lit in our neighborhood and shall bring them home if I can. But I now have such car-loads of junk that I don't know what to do with it.
There is still no new dope about what the Government is going to do with us.
But the work itself is getting better as time goes on. To be sure, we are pretty tired, for we have had no rest in eighteen days and the work is a little more nerve-racking and requires a good deal more physical exertion than it ever has before. Every muscle in me aches, but we all have a sort of satisfied feeling of having accomplished a whole lot and kept a pretty clean road record that repays.
My letters are rather stupid nowadays, but it can't be helped --- the attack is coming soon, and after that we shall rest and I can write without having to prop my eyes open.
There is some of the mud of the Chemin des Dames on this paper, so please consider it of historical interest instead of thinking I am serving you soiled paper. They are raising a dickens of a racket up here to-night. We are lying alongside the Aisne waiting for the German saucisses to go down, and the Huns are dropping a few over just to say good-evening, but they are far enough from us not to bother. Most of the obus are landing in the river and making quite beautiful geysers. It seems strange to talk of shells doing anything beautiful, but they are missing the bridge a mile and spouting water fifty feet in the air. So long as they don't elevate the noses of those guns, it is going to be fun to watch them come over. The sun is just going down the hill and if you listen closely and locate the direction you can often see the charges coming.
But to get away from the war --- I am to come home. To that end I began burning my bridges to-day, but it was n't turning down my country at all. It may not be the end, for the war will be long and very terrible, and many, many men will yet be called. The time will come when bad eyes and things will make no difference.
That is all only a possibility, ---of course nobody knows what will happen, ---but we must be prepared. With this experience and my ability to speak French, I ought always to be able to do decently whatever happens.
How tired I am of it all so heartless and dirty and useless. But we have done a lot of good here --- we can't help knowing that. The "good-bye" speech of the old men we relieved when we took the section over was a touching thing that I shall never forget. If it were only that those poor devils had got their chance to go home and be happy again, it would be worth it all, but we've done more than that and done it well, so there are no regrets.
Now word has just come to send the cars out three minutes apart. There is shelling and we are in for a nasty night. If we get home at daybreak it will be fifty-two hours since we have had even our poor excuses for a bed or a decent meal.
But there is n't a great deal of risk in the game. Of course, they never bother to shoot at us, and when we get in the way of a little fire it is our orders to save the trucks, so we don't get much.
At first I thought that was rather a cowardly thing to do, but I understand now what the necessity is and that sometimes it takes more courage to run for it than to stick.
This is more or less just to show you that they have typewriters in France, but also it is quicker, and speed counts now.
We are going like the d------, twelve hours on duty and nine hours off in which we eat, sleep, work on the cars, and be merry when we are not too tired Tonight we are not feeling very gay, for two of the boys were reported killed. They were not of this section, but they were friends of all of us and it is getting pretty close home. We take the north "trick" to-night, but it is our luck not to have anything happen. I have n't been within a quarter of a mile of an arriving shell in two weeks.
I wish I could take a little week-end trip across. It is awfully hard to know what to do about enlisting in the army over here --- I want to get home before going on with the game, but may lose opportunities by so doing that will never come again. There is no doubt in my mind but what the war is good for a couple of years more, at least, and that would mean that even if I did n't want to stick it out, I should have to, anyhow, in some capacity or other. For bad eyes and flat feet and such are n't going to be counted much longer; too many men are going to be needed for such trifles to matter.
However, there is not much over here now that I can do, for they are still holding to the same restrictions that they had at home.
I've got to run along now —--for all night on the road. Don't worry about me, for I always have luck and I manage to skin through somehow.
September 29, 1917.
It seems now that all my sleepless nights and worrying about what I was going to do for the rest of the war were wasted. The recruiting officers are here. Within an hour they had made it plain that all of the promises about being able to get in regardless of eyes and such things were in vain. I shall be allowed a special concession to complete the term of my contract as a sort of free-lance and about half of us are in the same boat. I don't know just what our status will be, but if the American army will have us in charge I think I need not worry about that, for they play fair.
I can't help being a little glad that I could n't make the grade. I did not want to a bit, --- none of us do, --- but we feel that we are needed and realize, perhaps a bit better than those at home, just how necessary it is to "carry on" and to give all one can. I may come home for a while, at least. There may be something later, but I shall not plan further until after I get back --- certainly the prospect of getting home is a whole lot in itself. After one has been here long enough, they say that no one plans that far ahead because it ceases to seem probable; but I have not attained that stage yet, although there have been a few times when it seemed exceedingly doubtful.
I dread the next ten days. There will be a big attack, and much heavy work such as we have been doing lately will become rather warm at times. We continue to be lucky --- have been within five minutes of two ammunition parc explosions which were caused by incendiary shells from the Boches; escaped from one parc that was being shelled by running the cars out every four minutes --- four minutes being the interval of fire, we had time to crank and move one car between shots. Two of the boys were hit that trip, but by spent shrapnel that made only slight flesh wounds that did not incapacitate them.
I am pretty tired --- some of us have had more or less double duty to do, as a few of the boys have had more than they could handle and had to be put en repos for a couple of weeks to rest up. To-day is my second full day of rest in twenty-four days, and it was naturally welcome. I have had ten hours of sleep, the first bath in two weeks, a shirt-hunt for fleas, have patched up the holes the mice chewed in my blankets, had a late breakfast of cold coffee and mouldy bread, and shall spend the next few hours in writing letters. The sort of thing I have just written looks rather odd in print, but really it is n't bad. For a little while my more or less fastidious sense revolted; but I soon got used to it all, and the way I have thrived under conditions certainly indicates that it does n't hurt any one. I have stored up enough good health the last four months to last me the rest of my life.
We sort of live by comparison over here, anyhow. The other fellow is almost always worse off than you are, so you count yourself lucky in any event, and let it go at that.
The time is long since past when I should have written you, but there has been no time. Many things have transspired in the last fifteen days (aside from the fact that we are working very hard) of which the most important is that I have joined the army.
This may be rather surprising in view of the fact that I so recently wrote you that they would not take me on account of my eyes. It was only a day after that letter that the officers came again saying that they needed us very much and would we do our part. They arranged for waivers on the eyes and I enlisted as a private in the Quartermaster Corps of the regular army (transport division).
I suppose it is just a little different enlisting out here under the shadow of the front. At home one has friends around and at least a chance to say good-byes. Certainly we know well enough what we are going into and that makes it harder. It did n't help any either to have been so sure that I was coming home that I had begun to plan for it.
But there is n't any question that there is a duty to stay, so we are determined to take things as they come and smile. My lot is easier than most at that, I suppose.
Winter is here already and is going to, be very disagreeable if it stays like it is now --- but, once again, "it is the war." This formative period when things are not altogether smooth is trying, of course, and does n't tend to lighten the temporary feeling that the bottom has dropped out of the scheme of things.
But in the war one does n't really have a right to plan month by month. It has to be year by year or not at all, for years are large enough to take care of most of the hopes we have.
I have not ceased to plan for things after the war is over, though God knows how long that may be. I think I have the right to plan, --- I am pretty sure of coming out all right, -especially if I go higher in the game. Then there may be furloughs if the war is long and one of those will be worth a year of ordinary life if that is all.
I am determined to be cheerful about the enlistment and you all must be too. It hurts us all a bit, of course, at first, but I think we shall all come to regard this as a normal abnormality. It may be two years before we are out of this --- certainly not longer. I shall have gained a good many things in experience as well as lost a good deal of headway in my start in life. It will be hard after the war, too, for a time, no doubt, but that is necessity and reckoned by world standards is not sacrifice. I regret that my service (motor transport) is not very highly regarded either in civil or military circles --- it is one of the despised, inglorious sort, but it is nevertheless a man's-size job and necessary.
My being in this, or anything else, of course, does n't win any battles, so I shall try to get used to being merely a part of a machine, although I hope to be able to remain a thinking part.
Love and courage to you all.
Pardon the writing tools, but consider yourself lucky at that. I ran out of ink yesterday and wrote to Ray last night on packing-paper. To-morrow this stub of pencil will be a total loss and I will quit bothering the censor. This is getting to be the worst war I ever fought in; but an Irishman I met yesterday said he thought the next four years would be the worst of it, so it is n't so bad --- yet.
We are quartered just now in a little 2 x 4 town and billeted in a cow-stable from which everything but twelve oxen, one hundred and twenty sheep, four peacocks, sixteen pheasants, twenty rabbits, and a couple of odd thousand of chickens have been removed. It is the most comfortable place I have seen in the war zone. It is warm and sometimes dry. A sign on the door says there is room for forty men in it, but says nothing about the three thousand assorted fleas and sheepticks.
It did n't rain yesterday. I felt uncomfortable without a raincoat and finally could n't stand the long dry spell and took a bath. There's ice on the water-tank every morning now, but I don't mind, for it thaws about noon and there's plenty of time after lunch to wash my face before drill. Drill, by the way, is one of the best things I do so long as I have an acre field to stop them in. Even at that I gave an order yesterday that made the squad hard to catch until I asked 'em to "please stop." They were very obliging about it because they were only about two feet from a five-foot fence.
Father's cigarettes drifted in the other day --- also a package of cookies from D. Buchanan. Needless to say both are being muchly enjoyed. I hope some more cigarettes are on the way. D-----'s never came. I have given them up as lost.
I have had no letters from the United States except one from father in six weeks now. I'm getting lonesome. Probably before morning I shall be miserable, for (being en repos now) I took a twenty-mile journey back to a large town and spent the afternoon in a pâtisserie. I'm not sure, but I think the bill was four dollars. That does n't matter, though, for after being cooped up in a place like this for four weeks, when you can't buy anything at all, it was worth it.
On the way home I lost our ordre du mouvement just about the time when the road was beginning to be thickly populated by military guards. That made it difficult till I remembered my birth certificate and flashed that on the first one. It worked like a charm, for it looked official so long as you could n't read what it was all about. A better stunt would be to carry around a diploma---that has the same effect upon the unsuspecting guard as forty yards of gold braid when one is riding in a staff car. In the care-free days before I enlisted in the army I was one of a party of five that penetrated fifteen miles through guarded roads, clad in pajamas and fur-lined coats, on a wild search for some drinkable beer and armed only with a pass to a New York movie show. "Pass" is the same word in French as in English, so that part was easy, but the beer was a dismal failure. It always is over here.
Some day I'm going to write a yarn about all the fool stunts I've done when we are en repos for a day or so. I can't seem to get in the mood for writing now, but perhaps I shall again later. I suppose this little mood I'm in now will wear off in a month or so. Maybe it is homesickness --- I don't know. Perhaps it is just disappointment. I find I had counted a good deal on coming home before enlisting, having kidded myself into thinking I had a right to. Now, unless I get a not-looked-for furlough, two years is the least I count on being here. Two years seems a long time looking forward, and the memories of all the things I had planned to do in them smart a little even as I realize how little I am losing compared with what it is to a lot of fellows.
This is a rotten letter, I know. Excuse me. We go back to work to-morrow, so I shan't have time to write for a while. Be good --- don't worry --- I'm all right.
Lest the letter which I wrote to you a week or more ago may not have reached you, I must say again the things I wrote in it. Briefly it told you that the recruiting officers had obtained a waiver for me on my eyes and that I had enlisted in the transport service of the regular army for the duration of the war. It was a bit hard in some ways, of course, for I had counted on seeing you again first, but now that the first pangs are less poignant I am mighty glad of it.
It is good to have American food and clothing again and officers who speak your own language and understand your ways. One feels a little better to be under one's own flag ---something that means a lot more than you think until you've tried another.
So I am as content as one can be in this sort of life --- the homesicknesses and memories and all the reasons that made me want to come home can be kept down most of the time, and we shall learn to keep on smiling after a while (I am afraid we shall have plenty of time in which to learn).
I had a letter from you to-day that must have been either very much rained on or dropped in the river. It was pretty much blurred, so perhaps I did n't get all it said, but you know now that all the other packages except the cigarettes have come to me. Now I may tell you that the sweater is here.
I wish you could know what the joy of getting packages is, the expectation before they are opened ---the search for the little notes. Those little incidents are big incidents that change the complexion of whole weeks.
You ask me what to send. You seem to know pretty well. I was rather surprised to find they called the knitted things luxuries, for we really need them very much. Out here we all call the sweaters and mufflers "knit-by-loving-hands things," and we mean more than a jest by it.
But aside from those things which we are supplied with and the things you have already sent, I think what we most crave are sweets and books. After the 1st we will no longer be able to buy even the wee little cakes that we used to buy (at $2.50 a pound) nor the candies which we sometimes got up courage to buy at the rate of $4 a pound.
As for books ---of course there are some here, but not the kind I like best. I've been hungry for a little touch of poetry, too, and one can buy nothing except British things even in Paris.
So when sometimes you feel inclined to send something, may it be one of these, please?
Just a line in haste to tell you what I am doing. This will come to you by the kindness of the last of the boys to start home. There are also some little packages for Christmas. I hope the packages can be got through all right.
We have just come through the attack of Malmaison --- you will have read about it if you follow the war news. It was, indeed, a glorious victory for our forces and one fortunately which did not cost us much in blood.
We of the transport service continue much in the same work as before and remain in the same sector, although closer up. During the counter-attack our camp was right in the path of things and we had to spend some unpleasant nights in half-flooded dugouts thirty feet underground. Now, however, things are fine and we have moved out of the cow-stable into nice clean barracks which will be our winter quarters.
There will not be much driving now, so that we shall not suffer very much from the cold which is here. There has been snow and a good deal of ice. The muffler has helped a great deal to keep me warm. I took it out yesterday and (much as I hated to) got it all wet, and it neither shrank nor rusted, so I know it is all right, for everything but the very best does one or the other in this climate.
Only fifteen minutes till train-time ---I must hurry.
Au revoir.
Your package full of good things came yesterday morning just as we were starting out on convoy, and since I had no time to open it I took it with me. I was glad, too, for we were out a long time and it was cold. I made hot tea with one of the little tablets dropped into my canteen and heated it on the exhaust pipe and ate cookies and chocolate with it.
It was a very pleasant surprise, for I had n't expected anything. Until one has been a long time without sweets, --- even sugar in the coffee --- one does n't realize how much those things mean in satisfying the appetite.
No one seems to know just what is to be done with us. They've needed us and we've been so busy here that there has been no time for changes. The Allies don't seem to be making a secret of the fact that Fritzie may make himself rather a handful soon, and whatever our army may do, if we stay here, we'll be in it plenty.
Lately there have been many long and difficult trips and we have been so shorthanded that where the French sections we are with have two drivers to the car and extra reliefs, we have had only one driver and no reliefs. It is a good thing we are young, for older eyes and "tireder" bodies couldn't stand the strain of continual days and nights. As it is we have weird fancies and "see things" a lot, but get through somehow.
May we brag just a bit to say we only wrecked one car and smashed three on the last trip, while the Frenchmen dropped them over cliffs, tore down bridges, hung them in trees, and turned them over and burned them all along a hundred and fifty miles of road? Don't blame the Frenchmen, though, --- three years of it have worn their nerve and stolen their "night eyes." Try turning off your lights some night when you are driving in the country through rain or fog ---try just a minute of it and compute the nervous strain of six hours of that through traffic.
But mostly it is only the long hours and mental and physical strain --- exposure and fatigue --- that we have to fear. Our cars are so big and heavy that steam rollers and the "tanks" are the only things we need be afraid of in collision, while in "spills" the car takes the shock and we are only badly shaken and have a sore "tummy" where the retaining straps catch us. Fire is very terrifying, but seldom comes and we know well how to fight it.
Also this is n't one of the terrible tales I will be telling thirty years from now. I believe I shan't want to be the kind of a "vetrun" who sits around and "recollecks" and gives flags to school children!
Now --- I've enjoyed being a little foolish to-night, sitting up in bed smoking "les cigarettes Américaines" and nibbling dainties you sent me, and I'm feeling ever so much better, with the grippe most gone.
It is rather laughable -on the very evening when I wrote you that we were dug in for the winter and that the work would not be bad at all, they ordered us out and we've been on the road five days and nights, stopping only now and then to fill the cars with gas and oil. It has been rather terrible --- the worst we've ever had. I drove alone, and for the first two days and nights I never left the wheel. There was no food, for the supply-train was hopelessly wrecked, and I went all that time on half a can of salmon and some hard-tack and chocolate.
You don't have any idea what that means, do you? Forty-eight hours with your fingers cramped around a steering-wheel---rain beating in your face and stinging your eyes till they cried and stung and stuck half shut --- straining to see in the dark --- fighting the wheel and fighting sleep, knowing that if the latter got you the other would too ---passing the wrecks of carloads of troops that had toppled over and wounded their charges --fighting that which we most dread, the fire underneath in the brake-bands that creeps toward the gas-tanks before you know it's there.
There will be more of that to-morrow ---we are far to the north on the desolate plains of Flanders, helping the English in their splendid push on Cambrai. To-day we rest, and God knows we need it. I slept eight hours last night lying in the mud under my car which was too fully loaded to climb into. There is oil and mud on my face and in my hair --- I have not shaved for a week --- my clothing is torn and burned and water-soaked --- and I'm cold to the bone.
Really I thought in a half-delirious sort of way that I was going to die or go mad like Clarke and have to be choked unconscious. He, poor chap, after ditching his car four times and having it catch on fire once, went completely. Practically all of us were "seeing things." I can laugh at it now, but not so then. You see, the salmon had been open much too long. I knew it, but was starved; so the ptomaine caught me at the wheel. I remember laughing crazily a long time as I drove.
Once I "shyed" at something on the road and crashed through a fence, but came to in time to keep from going over.
It is n't very much fun --- pretty cold---raining and snowing by turns----and these forced marches without sleep, but it won't last long, and if it will mean that they are going to drive all winter I'd go through anything. If they only can and will do it the summer will see the end, I'm sure. These last two pushes we've been...(*)
*[NOTE: Censored.]
Two letters from you came to-day---one containing pictures of David and one containing news of things at home that I was equally glad to have. I shall try to answer them adequately, but I'm afraid I am a bit stupid and tired still.
We have just come back from a seven day convoy that contained more of the vicissitudes of war than anything else we've ever done. However, it is all over now, and our travels along the front have made me more optimistic than I have dared to be in some time.
I am afraid I've been pretty homesick lately. The letters that come from you at home are so full of plans for a Christmas that is n't going to be, and you seem to be counting on my coming so much, that it hurts.
It may be a long time --- we may all get very tired of waiting till this is over. One can't help the selfish wish that it was some one else that had the job to do. But certainly we don't wish it had been our father's generation nor that it should be the generation of our children.
I've been seeing a good deal more of the real horror of battles lately. Our sections have worked in two attacks during the fall and I've seen the awful wake that lay behind the advance. Of course, we are dreadfully sick and tired of it all. We seem to live on hopes and speculations as to when it will be over and we can come home again.
Really it is n't always as bad as that ---melancholia seldom visits us. Mostly --on the surface at least ---we are just slightly sobered college boys. There is never any lack of spirit for the day's work and we manage to squeeze a laugh out of almost any circumstance. The old friends are mostly gone now, but the new men ---the regulars --- are much the same. It does n't matter much whether your accent is Harvard or Hoboken --- whether you were a football star or chewed Star Plug --- out here on the job. If you're a man ---a willing worker, and not too d ----d incapable --- you'll do to push a "cammie."
Ten minutes to "taps." I shall have to halt this. Forgot to say that a box of Hershey's came in fine condition from mother. I haven't sampled it yet---saving it till Friday, which is my birthday.
I think I will have a party. That will probably break me till pay-day, but until the first of the year I'm not going to save my pennies. There are too many things I either want or need (or both) by way of winter equipment. I expect to be comfortable if it is possible.
If I had n't already enlisted before your two letters about my staying came, I am afraid I should have been a bit confused. Neither of them made allowance for conditions here, but of course you couldn't know that. I did the only thing there was for me to do --- not because I was afraid of the voyage home (for I think you overestimate the danger there), but because it seemed up to me to do it. I have enlisted as a private. It means hard, tiresome, dirty work compared with peace standards, but compared to other services it is n't too bad. I don't expect to stay a private, however, --- at least I can be a non-com, and that will lessen up the manual labor which is often a little more than I can stand up under. I have already taken examination for a sergeant's warrant --- passed thirteenth out of the outfit and shall get it sooner or later.
We don't know just what we are going to be put at or where we are going. I probably can't tell you when I do know. If we stay here the winter will be pretty tough or pretty comfortable, depending on how much we roll. The quarters here are good, but the roads and the weather abominable. Compared with home temperatures it isn't so very cold -just about freezing, but that goes pretty hard when you eat, sleep, and live in it for seven days and nights.
Don't worry about me, though.
To-day, by the way, is Thanksgiving. We are told that we may have Turkey in a few days. I doubt it.
Love to you all and a Merry Christmas.