TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ASHLEY COUNTY EAGLE JANUARY 3, 1918 P. 2
My Dear Sweet Mother:
I hope that you are in perfect health now. I sure did hate to hear that you had been in ill health. I am getting along just fine. No mama, I don’t sleep cold at night. We have four heavy blankets and they with our heavy overcoats keep us perfectly warm. But I thank you for offering to send me more cover for my bed. Don’t worry over my health. Uncle Sam knows the value of a healthy “sammy” and the medical department here is on the job. Then every soldier is taught the value of good health and our officers are doing everything in their power to keep us well.
Statistics show that out of the 20,000 soldiers in camp, deaths are fewer than in our large cities, and we have had a measles epidemic and good weather for pneumonia. And you know that measles and pneumonia don’t go well together. I sure am glad that I have had measles and mumps. I am better off here than I would be at home: for health is protected by every energy our officers can put forth. And we have a set of officers who have the interest of their boys at heart. Our Captain has experience in the Phillipines and you know that is the nost unhealthful country our soldiers ever had to put up with. We won’t get to come home for Xmas, but most of the men are in good spirits, for they realize it is a good time for sacrificing pleasures and training themselves so that an end may come to “Kaiserism” in the quickest possible way. And it is coming, for Uncle Sam’s boys are anxious to go to the front. And we are being trained in the most scientific ways. There are English and French officers here training us.
Mama, you may tell the mothers of Hamburg and Ashley Country boys that they needn’t worry over the health of their boys: but they will need cheering up and a letter is a cheerful thing for a soldier, and most any one could write some soldier friend of their’s a letter.
Well, mama, I hope to get to come home when we are freed from quarantine. So by by, with lots of love from your soldier boy.
Bunyan Riley
Co. K. 153rd Inf.
NOTES: Partial letter written from Camp Beauregard, Louisiana to his mother Mr. J. H. Riley.
TRANSCRIBED BY SHANNON SOUTHARD
My Dear Sweet Mother:
I hope that you are in perfect health now. I sure did hate to hear that you had been in ill health. I am getting along just fine. No mama, I don’t sleep cold at night. We have four heavy blankets and they with our heavy overcoats keep us perfectly warm. But I thank you for offering to send me more cover for my bed. Don’t worry over my health. Uncle Sam knows the value of a healthy “sammy” and the medical department here is on the job. Then every soldier is taught the value of good health and our officers are doing everything in their power to keep us well.
Statistics show that out of the 20,000 soldiers in camp, deaths are fewer than in our large cities, and we have had a measles epidemic and good weather for pneumonia. And you know that measles and pneumonia don’t go well together. I sure am glad that I have had measles and mumps. I am better off here than I would be at home: for health is protected by every energy our officers can put forth. And we have a set of officers who have the interest of their boys at heart. Our Captain has experience in the Phillipines and you know that is the nost unhealthful country our soldiers ever had to put up with. We won’t get to come home for Xmas, but most of the men are in good spirits, for they realize it is a good time for sacrificing pleasures and training themselves so that an end may come to “Kaiserism” in the quickest possible way. And it is coming, for Uncle Sam’s boys are anxious to go to the front. And we are being trained in the most scientific ways. There are English and French officers here training us.
Mama, you may tell the mothers of Hamburg and Ashley Country boys that they needn’t worry over the health of their boys: but they will need cheering up and a letter is a cheerful thing for a soldier, and most any one could write some soldier friend of their’s a letter.
Well, mama, I hope to get to come home when we are freed from quarantine. So by by, with lots of love from your soldier boy.
Bunyan Riley
Co. K. 153rd Inf.
NOTES: Partial letter written from Camp Beauregard, Louisiana to his mother Mr. J. H. Riley.
TRANSCRIBED BY SHANNON SOUTHARD