September 21st, 1918
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Sept. 21, '18
Dear Mother, I have a letter from you and one from Grandma in my pocket. The post mark on yours is July 31 and on hers is Aug 6 and hers got to me one day ahead. Dave wrote to you last week and I wrote to Grandma. Since then we have seen the newspaper writeups of this salient, and seen the praises of our dough boys and our gunners. As a result of turn No. 1 in the trenches the battery owns three "croix de guerre." One to the telephone officer, one to the telephone sergeant, and one to the 1st sergeant. A telephone lineman is in the hospital with pneumonia and the captain is also there, just sick. He looked out for his men's |
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welfare and neglected his own. He will be back soon. You can't keep a good man down. When we fight again he will lead on, sick or well. We are in rest camp resting little and drilling daily. What with drilling and wearing our new ill-fitting trousers we would feel like recruits, if we didn't have that field experience which makes us feel like veterans. We wear our wool sox now, and at night we take off our shoes and put on several pair of wool sox. We wear shirt and sweater on the hard ground to make a soft cushion for our hip bones. Don't tell this last to Margaret Heyn. For a pillow |
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now we use our gas mask satchel with our overseas cap for a pillow top. Our former telephone corporal is our battery dispatch rider now and lineman Rankin is promoted to corporal. Your son is ranking duty corporal of the detail, has been for one and a half months, since the ranking duty corporal was made sergeant. Dave and two other men on the detail were made 1st class privates, which means 3 dollars a month more. His address on the envelope is still pvt. If you should put 1st class pvt., the mail man would laugh because it is not customary. Our artillery brigade is using much German "materiel." If you read the papers of a few days ago you will know why. Also the papers which mentioned our division in July. We could have German pianos or trench mortars |
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if we would go after them with our trucks. Fred told us that Sephen was with Billy Shanabrook, formerly of D.G. [abbreviation for Downers Grove]. They are bunkies. Billy pitched that 48 to 0 game against East Grove in 1905. Don't know where Gale and Carl are. See a D.G. Reporter. You said "hottest of the fight." Why didn't you mention the exact salient. Your letters aren't censored. Your advice to keep cool is humorous. We undoubtedly will this winter. A group of us know enough words usually to be able to puzzle out a few sentences an hour in gesticulating conversation with French soldiers (frogs). Father's statement about athletics and every Mason may be right but we stood our first turn in the trenches fine. Lots of love, James |
