TRANSCRIBED FROM THE LOG CABIN DEMOCRAT OCTOBER 17, 1918 P. 6
September 14, 1918.
Dear Mother and All:
I think I wrote you last Sunday, or thereabouts, but am not sure. Also I am not sure just which day will be Sunday, but there is pretty certain to be a shortage of time. Just now I am stealing a little of Uncle Sam's time, and writing while pretending to be waiting for some horses to return from water. We are having a great time. We don't have anything to do but work. Sleep is a thing to be thought of, fondly, as one thinks of the dear departed. Food is something else just as scarce, not that the army hasn't got it. It has lots of it. Thanks to the devotion of the people at home, but it can't keep up with us. In fact, about the only thing that we haven't outrun is the Hun. He seems to be good at running, but we are hot on his trail and will get him if he doesn't watchout. We have been handling him rather roughly of late. I have read of these German prisoners who surrendered willingly, but didn't take a great deal of stock in the stories, but I have seen lots of them who were smiling and joking about it. One kept his German bread until he got back into the rear of the lines and then threw it away on the grounds that the Americans would give him plenty of better bread.
I really don't remember just what I wrote you last. It really makes very little difference, I suppose, for there is nothing new. You people at home are better posted than we are who are right up here on the firing line as we know only what is happening in our immediate neighborhood.
Mail is something else we have outstripped and I haven't heard from the United States for some time, at least a week, and sometimes I get mail oftener than that. I don't think of any further news, and guess I will stop as I want to write another letter. But will philosophize just a little bit first.
In another part of France, we had a position in a primeval pine forest. The Germans, fortunately, did not know our location, and it resembled a camping party rather than a war. But today I have an ideal battlefield. I am on the crest of a hill and a short distance away is another. In the valley between lies the ruins of a French village. Incidentally I may state that they are the most ruined ruins I have ever seen. We have just driven friend Hun out of it, after nearly four years possession. Over to my left is another in the same condition. The valley in between is cut up by endless trenches and torn up by shell holes.
I washed my face a while ago, for the first time in two days, and last night I had my bedding roll opened out, thinking to get a few hours sleep on it, but the fates decreed otherwise, except between 4:30 and 5:30.
I really will quit now.
With love to all.
Willie.
NOTES: This letter was written by Lieut. Willie James from France. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. James of Conway, Arkansas.
TRANSCRIBED BY LAEL HARROD
September 14, 1918.
Dear Mother and All:
I think I wrote you last Sunday, or thereabouts, but am not sure. Also I am not sure just which day will be Sunday, but there is pretty certain to be a shortage of time. Just now I am stealing a little of Uncle Sam's time, and writing while pretending to be waiting for some horses to return from water. We are having a great time. We don't have anything to do but work. Sleep is a thing to be thought of, fondly, as one thinks of the dear departed. Food is something else just as scarce, not that the army hasn't got it. It has lots of it. Thanks to the devotion of the people at home, but it can't keep up with us. In fact, about the only thing that we haven't outrun is the Hun. He seems to be good at running, but we are hot on his trail and will get him if he doesn't watchout. We have been handling him rather roughly of late. I have read of these German prisoners who surrendered willingly, but didn't take a great deal of stock in the stories, but I have seen lots of them who were smiling and joking about it. One kept his German bread until he got back into the rear of the lines and then threw it away on the grounds that the Americans would give him plenty of better bread.
I really don't remember just what I wrote you last. It really makes very little difference, I suppose, for there is nothing new. You people at home are better posted than we are who are right up here on the firing line as we know only what is happening in our immediate neighborhood.
Mail is something else we have outstripped and I haven't heard from the United States for some time, at least a week, and sometimes I get mail oftener than that. I don't think of any further news, and guess I will stop as I want to write another letter. But will philosophize just a little bit first.
In another part of France, we had a position in a primeval pine forest. The Germans, fortunately, did not know our location, and it resembled a camping party rather than a war. But today I have an ideal battlefield. I am on the crest of a hill and a short distance away is another. In the valley between lies the ruins of a French village. Incidentally I may state that they are the most ruined ruins I have ever seen. We have just driven friend Hun out of it, after nearly four years possession. Over to my left is another in the same condition. The valley in between is cut up by endless trenches and torn up by shell holes.
I washed my face a while ago, for the first time in two days, and last night I had my bedding roll opened out, thinking to get a few hours sleep on it, but the fates decreed otherwise, except between 4:30 and 5:30.
I really will quit now.
With love to all.
Willie.
NOTES: This letter was written by Lieut. Willie James from France. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. James of Conway, Arkansas.
TRANSCRIBED BY LAEL HARROD