TRANSCRIBED FROM THE NEWPORT DAILY INDEPENDENT SEPTEMBER 10, 1918 P. 2
Dear Carlisle:
Can’t write you much of what is going on here, but anyway I am going to write you. I have been over a great deal of France and England and it is great. England is a land of flowers, and if your wife was here she would not have to have boxes and pots for her flowers. They just grow out of doors and run all over the walls of the houses, and listen, Carlisle, this would be a great country for the automobile business. The roads are fine. There are more pretty girls in this country than I ever saw in all my life, but no boys at all. France is a pretty country too. They raise lots of wheat, oats and grapes, but you know the old saying, “If you can’t talk, shake a bush,” well, I’m getting tired of shaking bushes all the time, for we can’t speak French to these people and I don’t think it will pay to learn French because they can’t speak French in Berlin any more than they do English, and you know Berlin is where we change cars for the United States of America. Now as to the battlefield, that is hell. After all we have the amusing side of it, even in the trenches. I have been to the front for several days, and “over the top” three times, and even in the rage of the battle you have to laugh at some funny things that are said and done. I am laid up in a hospital for awhile, being knocked out by a bursting shell, but I am going back to the trenches before long. Will close.
Your friend,
Forrest O. Lawrence,
Infantry. H. D. B. Company. 103 A.,
American Exp. F.
NOTES: Lawrence is from Newport, Arkansas and is writing to his friend Carlisle Heard.
TRANSCRIBED BY LARAE SHURLEY
Dear Carlisle:
Can’t write you much of what is going on here, but anyway I am going to write you. I have been over a great deal of France and England and it is great. England is a land of flowers, and if your wife was here she would not have to have boxes and pots for her flowers. They just grow out of doors and run all over the walls of the houses, and listen, Carlisle, this would be a great country for the automobile business. The roads are fine. There are more pretty girls in this country than I ever saw in all my life, but no boys at all. France is a pretty country too. They raise lots of wheat, oats and grapes, but you know the old saying, “If you can’t talk, shake a bush,” well, I’m getting tired of shaking bushes all the time, for we can’t speak French to these people and I don’t think it will pay to learn French because they can’t speak French in Berlin any more than they do English, and you know Berlin is where we change cars for the United States of America. Now as to the battlefield, that is hell. After all we have the amusing side of it, even in the trenches. I have been to the front for several days, and “over the top” three times, and even in the rage of the battle you have to laugh at some funny things that are said and done. I am laid up in a hospital for awhile, being knocked out by a bursting shell, but I am going back to the trenches before long. Will close.
Your friend,
Forrest O. Lawrence,
Infantry. H. D. B. Company. 103 A.,
American Exp. F.
NOTES: Lawrence is from Newport, Arkansas and is writing to his friend Carlisle Heard.
TRANSCRIBED BY LARAE SHURLEY