TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ATKINS CHRONICLE FEBRUARY 8, 1918 P. 1
Dear Bud:
How is everything going by now?
I am still improving physically and holding my own morally. I wrote you a card yesterday—reported the weather fine. There is a change today—has been raining most all day but it is not cold. However, it may be cold as kraut by night. This is a very fast country—don’t take the weather long to change here.
I also wrote on the card that I was going to rifle range yesterday afternoon. I went all right. We shot three hundred yards yesterday, 15 shots. A possible of 75, each shot is a possible 5. I made 56. There has been only two men in the company who have beat me. One was one of our sergeants who is considered one of the best marksmen in the company. He and I used the same gun and made the same score. Believe me an eight inch bulls eye is hard to hit three hundred yards—can’t hardly see it with one eye shut.
One of the sergeants told me yesterday that if I kept up my record on the range I would make marksmanship.
I hope you and Dr. Laycook are having better weather for going to town.
We are to have the quarantine lifted in a day or so if nothing new pops up. Wish you could be here and see us drill. We are getting this drilling down pat.
We take thirty minutes of physical exercise most every day. Pull any stunt that can be imagined—run foot races, play leap frog, get flat on the ground and crawl like a worm, sometimes see who can roll the farthest, jump up and down with a man on our back.
Several of the boys in this company have took distance in the last 10 days. I don’t imagine they will escape very long. I would like to go home for a few days but if I can’t go without trying to slip off I will just stay with it till the war is over. There is quite a bunch in the guard house now for leaving without permission.
Hope this will find you all well.
Elmer
Camp Beauregard, Feb. 2
NOTES: Letter written by Elmer Boyd.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON