TRANSCRIBED FROM THE GURDON TIMES MAY 3, 1919 P. 1
It has been my luck to see the turbid Ouachita swollen by repeated rises until it seemed in reality as large as pictures by Little Rock’s congressman, in their plea for appropriations, sweeping its way with resistless force towards the restless ocean.
I have seen the Arkansas bottom a wide expanse of water, countless farms inundated, and flocks of frightened farmers roosting in the tree tops waiting for help and whiskey.
I have seen Red River quickly cover its wide stretch of treacherous quicksand and surge over its confining banks, halting for the time the great army of Oklahoma bootleggers, Oklahoma bound.
I have been in the swamps of Louisiana, where it is so damp and dismal that even the alligators reach and untimely end through chills and lonesomeness.
I have been in Alexandria and listened to the frightful chorus of frogs as they hoarsely sob about the cruel fate which compelled them to live in such a place, for in all that mighty marsh there was not even a chunk upon which to rest and sing the plaintive lay—“Aye, and these also.”
I have been in the Mississippi bottom and have heard the mosquitoes singing their song of carnage, numberless as the sands of the seashore, Hun like, hunting the very life blood of innocent women and children.
I have heard the sobbing cypress and sighing pine, dropping upon the bosom of mother earth thousands of pearly tears, relate to each other the tribulations of a hundred years, while I, a luckless hunter, soaking wet, shivered through a long winter night to wait for the morning challenge of the king of gobblers.
I have been hustled unceremoniously from the warm embraces of a down couch in the wee small hours of the wintry night, clad in the raiment of a martyred saint, to stumble over furniture maliciously placed the evening before sent on done the stairway, barefooted and on a porch covered with ice and snow, for the noble purpose of letting the cat out—“The worst yet.”
I have done squads east and west and on north into line in the mud at Camp Travis, with the Texas norther whipping the loose folds of my B.V.D.’s against the goose flesh until the noise sounds like the parting of the waves, that the world might be safe for democracy. These things have I done and seen and heard and I have survived, but never have I seen the equal of this French climate.
Should fortune decree that I escape from the seething sea of mud and reach once more a clime where the sun is not mildewed: That I leave this place, where ones very soul is waterlogged, and reach a place where ones beds can be hung outside to dry, then, oh then, the first fool that sayeth to me, Sunny France, shall suddenly terminate his useless existence in this vale of tears none will be there to mourn him, but there will be 2,000,000 doughboys to sing my praises even unto the third and fourth generations; 2,000,000 doughboys, who have fought cornbeef, crown prince, and cooties, poison gas, propaganda, and prunes, the dampest weather that a man ever say. The moral of this story is that I want to go home.
Homer L. Brown,
Co. F., 5th Div., Army of Occupation, Germany
NOTES: Homer L. Brown was the son of the Clark County Bank assistant cashier, W. Lee Brown.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON
It has been my luck to see the turbid Ouachita swollen by repeated rises until it seemed in reality as large as pictures by Little Rock’s congressman, in their plea for appropriations, sweeping its way with resistless force towards the restless ocean.
I have seen the Arkansas bottom a wide expanse of water, countless farms inundated, and flocks of frightened farmers roosting in the tree tops waiting for help and whiskey.
I have seen Red River quickly cover its wide stretch of treacherous quicksand and surge over its confining banks, halting for the time the great army of Oklahoma bootleggers, Oklahoma bound.
I have been in the swamps of Louisiana, where it is so damp and dismal that even the alligators reach and untimely end through chills and lonesomeness.
I have been in Alexandria and listened to the frightful chorus of frogs as they hoarsely sob about the cruel fate which compelled them to live in such a place, for in all that mighty marsh there was not even a chunk upon which to rest and sing the plaintive lay—“Aye, and these also.”
I have been in the Mississippi bottom and have heard the mosquitoes singing their song of carnage, numberless as the sands of the seashore, Hun like, hunting the very life blood of innocent women and children.
I have heard the sobbing cypress and sighing pine, dropping upon the bosom of mother earth thousands of pearly tears, relate to each other the tribulations of a hundred years, while I, a luckless hunter, soaking wet, shivered through a long winter night to wait for the morning challenge of the king of gobblers.
I have been hustled unceremoniously from the warm embraces of a down couch in the wee small hours of the wintry night, clad in the raiment of a martyred saint, to stumble over furniture maliciously placed the evening before sent on done the stairway, barefooted and on a porch covered with ice and snow, for the noble purpose of letting the cat out—“The worst yet.”
I have done squads east and west and on north into line in the mud at Camp Travis, with the Texas norther whipping the loose folds of my B.V.D.’s against the goose flesh until the noise sounds like the parting of the waves, that the world might be safe for democracy. These things have I done and seen and heard and I have survived, but never have I seen the equal of this French climate.
Should fortune decree that I escape from the seething sea of mud and reach once more a clime where the sun is not mildewed: That I leave this place, where ones very soul is waterlogged, and reach a place where ones beds can be hung outside to dry, then, oh then, the first fool that sayeth to me, Sunny France, shall suddenly terminate his useless existence in this vale of tears none will be there to mourn him, but there will be 2,000,000 doughboys to sing my praises even unto the third and fourth generations; 2,000,000 doughboys, who have fought cornbeef, crown prince, and cooties, poison gas, propaganda, and prunes, the dampest weather that a man ever say. The moral of this story is that I want to go home.
Homer L. Brown,
Co. F., 5th Div., Army of Occupation, Germany
NOTES: Homer L. Brown was the son of the Clark County Bank assistant cashier, W. Lee Brown.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON