TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ROGERS DEMOCRAT MAY 9, 1918 P. 1
Camp Travis, April 28, 1918
Dear father and mother:
I certainly appreciated your last letter especially in view of the fact that I had not answered your last one. I have never gotten over the habit of getting into everything that comes along so my time is pretty well all used up. At spare hours from drill I take up baseball, track team, work, Bible classes, non-com schools, etc., so that when I get back to the barracks I’m generally ready to hit my bunk for a rest.
I have been working hard in line of duty of late, too; real old-fashioned labor. We have almost dispensed with foot drills except for the “rookies” and are doing problem work. I have built miles and miles of telephone lines in the cactus brush adjacent to San Antonio, only to tear them up next day and rebuild them for another “problem” in a different “sector.” But tho it is actually harder work we like it better than drill. It is not so monotonous and a fellow is free in a measure from the military restraint of standing or marching at “attention,” preserving silence and such like.
I can’t say that I wish they would keep me in the training camp until the war is over. It would seem that a fellow would be anything but anxious to dash into a whirlpool of droth such as will rage on the western front, doubtless, for many months yet, still I often feel like I used to hear you tell at the neighbors as they passed by early in the morning on their way to the circus, “Hurry up, boys, or the tickets will all be gone.” I guess most every fellow feels lucky enough to face it cheerfully. I have seen very few who would not welcome a chance to sail. Twelve lieutenants from our regiment left for a point of embarkation this morning. They are envied rather than pitied by their brother officers and men. It’s a very serious proposition to me—yet the stakes for which we are playing are so great that a fellow may well afford to forget all selfishness and give himself as tho he had lives to burn. We can’t afford to lose the war.
But I am still at a loss to know when I will be on my way to action. When I returned from Dallas I found that in my absence they had removed a half hundred good men from my battery around whom we had been building a fighting machine, as we thot. They have been replaced with raw recruits now and more to follow as we acrry a little more than half war strength, and of those only a few are left of the first draft. According to newspaper “dope” we are to be filled up with the 10,000 men now arriving for training for overseas duty, but it will take some weeks to put these new men, not yet in uniform, into any kind of shape to go. So if I remain a member of this unit it would seem that I will be here some time yet.
My captain told me yesterday that I was to go to Headquarters Co. of this regiment next week on detached service, which probably will amount to a transfer in the end he said: “Deason, we hate to lose you, but it’s the Colonel’s orders upon the recommendation of the regimental reconnaissance officer.” He said: “That’s the worst of it; when the battery gets a good man the regiment comes along and take him away.” I gathered from that they wanted me to work with one of the battalion or the regimental signal details, rather than the battery. He spoke as tho I should consider it a compliment and a good prospect of a little promotion. I hate to quit the old organization. I have the best detail in the regiment in Battery “D” and a fellow becomes sentimentally attached to a bunch of good fellows with whom he has labored hard and long , but the next step is to try to excel with Headquarters Co. anything that I may have done here if the opportunity comes. My address is still at Battery “D” tho, and will be unless I am transferred outright later on.
We are scheduled to go to the range at Camp Bullis again this week, the trip that was postponed from the middle of this month. Tho life is a little rough out here, sometime we look forward to it rather joyfully as it offers a happy diversion in training activities.
I can see the railway tracks from my window in the barracks where trainloads of recruits pass very often coming into camp, and occasionally they meet a trainload going out as they come in, but these trainloads are the finished product, tanned faces and hardened muscles, brown colored uniforms and wide service hats They greet one another as they pass—the one envious of the fellow who has had a lot of the hard knocks already and has become a “regular.” The other smiles sympathetically as he thinks doubtless, of the painful process the recruit is facing, of sweating off his fat, or getting his crooked and corn covered toes used to a
shoe that is big enough for him, or exercising to reduce his “bay window.” Not many fellows care to change from a civilian to a soldier more than once in a life.
I read with much interest about the strawberries, the corn, the hay, the melons and all. Believe me, the old Ozark plateau presents many an alluring picture to my mind as I scramble around down here where every kind of plant that grows has a thorn on it. I may not be able to stay so far away from it always.
Write when you can.
Your loving son,
MARK DEASON
NOTES: This letter was written by Mark Jackson Deason of Rogers, Arkansas. He was born on January 14, 1891 in Rogers and died on February 26, 1980 in Natchez, Mississippi. He is buried in the Greenlawn Memorial Park in Natchez. He enlisted on September 19, 1917 and was discharged on February 8, 1919. He was living in Texas when he registered for the draft.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON
Camp Travis, April 28, 1918
Dear father and mother:
I certainly appreciated your last letter especially in view of the fact that I had not answered your last one. I have never gotten over the habit of getting into everything that comes along so my time is pretty well all used up. At spare hours from drill I take up baseball, track team, work, Bible classes, non-com schools, etc., so that when I get back to the barracks I’m generally ready to hit my bunk for a rest.
I have been working hard in line of duty of late, too; real old-fashioned labor. We have almost dispensed with foot drills except for the “rookies” and are doing problem work. I have built miles and miles of telephone lines in the cactus brush adjacent to San Antonio, only to tear them up next day and rebuild them for another “problem” in a different “sector.” But tho it is actually harder work we like it better than drill. It is not so monotonous and a fellow is free in a measure from the military restraint of standing or marching at “attention,” preserving silence and such like.
I can’t say that I wish they would keep me in the training camp until the war is over. It would seem that a fellow would be anything but anxious to dash into a whirlpool of droth such as will rage on the western front, doubtless, for many months yet, still I often feel like I used to hear you tell at the neighbors as they passed by early in the morning on their way to the circus, “Hurry up, boys, or the tickets will all be gone.” I guess most every fellow feels lucky enough to face it cheerfully. I have seen very few who would not welcome a chance to sail. Twelve lieutenants from our regiment left for a point of embarkation this morning. They are envied rather than pitied by their brother officers and men. It’s a very serious proposition to me—yet the stakes for which we are playing are so great that a fellow may well afford to forget all selfishness and give himself as tho he had lives to burn. We can’t afford to lose the war.
But I am still at a loss to know when I will be on my way to action. When I returned from Dallas I found that in my absence they had removed a half hundred good men from my battery around whom we had been building a fighting machine, as we thot. They have been replaced with raw recruits now and more to follow as we acrry a little more than half war strength, and of those only a few are left of the first draft. According to newspaper “dope” we are to be filled up with the 10,000 men now arriving for training for overseas duty, but it will take some weeks to put these new men, not yet in uniform, into any kind of shape to go. So if I remain a member of this unit it would seem that I will be here some time yet.
My captain told me yesterday that I was to go to Headquarters Co. of this regiment next week on detached service, which probably will amount to a transfer in the end he said: “Deason, we hate to lose you, but it’s the Colonel’s orders upon the recommendation of the regimental reconnaissance officer.” He said: “That’s the worst of it; when the battery gets a good man the regiment comes along and take him away.” I gathered from that they wanted me to work with one of the battalion or the regimental signal details, rather than the battery. He spoke as tho I should consider it a compliment and a good prospect of a little promotion. I hate to quit the old organization. I have the best detail in the regiment in Battery “D” and a fellow becomes sentimentally attached to a bunch of good fellows with whom he has labored hard and long , but the next step is to try to excel with Headquarters Co. anything that I may have done here if the opportunity comes. My address is still at Battery “D” tho, and will be unless I am transferred outright later on.
We are scheduled to go to the range at Camp Bullis again this week, the trip that was postponed from the middle of this month. Tho life is a little rough out here, sometime we look forward to it rather joyfully as it offers a happy diversion in training activities.
I can see the railway tracks from my window in the barracks where trainloads of recruits pass very often coming into camp, and occasionally they meet a trainload going out as they come in, but these trainloads are the finished product, tanned faces and hardened muscles, brown colored uniforms and wide service hats They greet one another as they pass—the one envious of the fellow who has had a lot of the hard knocks already and has become a “regular.” The other smiles sympathetically as he thinks doubtless, of the painful process the recruit is facing, of sweating off his fat, or getting his crooked and corn covered toes used to a
shoe that is big enough for him, or exercising to reduce his “bay window.” Not many fellows care to change from a civilian to a soldier more than once in a life.
I read with much interest about the strawberries, the corn, the hay, the melons and all. Believe me, the old Ozark plateau presents many an alluring picture to my mind as I scramble around down here where every kind of plant that grows has a thorn on it. I may not be able to stay so far away from it always.
Write when you can.
Your loving son,
MARK DEASON
NOTES: This letter was written by Mark Jackson Deason of Rogers, Arkansas. He was born on January 14, 1891 in Rogers and died on February 26, 1980 in Natchez, Mississippi. He is buried in the Greenlawn Memorial Park in Natchez. He enlisted on September 19, 1917 and was discharged on February 8, 1919. He was living in Texas when he registered for the draft.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON