St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1917-11-28

OF the first bunch, and so on AS was
No. 5 man in the company I went on
mess duty at once. We eat an hour
before the men do wait until the men
! have all eaten then clean off al the
scraps, take the dirty dishes up to the
! dish washers, wash the tables, sweep
| back on the tables. So many men
have, gone ashore today that not all
of our tables have been full This
morning we had only d hundred men
in our hail tout of usual thousand
i this noon we had two hundred and to-
night we had none at all. SO you see
we haven't done very much today
Probably tomorrow we won't have any
all day long. for Sunday is one of the
days when we get liberty. I'll have
shore liberty from noon until 11:30p.m
No never have got the comfort Kit
you sent by John Birch. We have y
member in our company who is no.
/ torieusly HgEt-ingered. Just the other
dag, he remark etl-f.whatever get
away with | keep" I'm going to hunt
up Birch, take him over to our shack
show him this fellow, and if Birch
says Shorty" is the one to whom he
gave the kit, I'm going to get the kit,
or Shorty will ride in a stretcher to
the Naval hospital. No less than nine
fellows in the company say that, as
soon as they get ashore they are going
to "do Shorty up
We are having good weather lately
for change, AS soon as our company
gets night guard duty though the ice
cold winds will begin to blow. The
other night two of our fellows were
on duty and were standing behind a
pile Of. tent floors when a gust of wind
took two of the floors and carried them
quite distance, just missing one of
the boys head. If it had hit him it
! would probably have killed him.
We have a peach of shack. 1t is
! just large enough for our eighty men
has steam heat, electric lights, is
double boarded and has a double floor
Although most of US prefer hamInocks
we set along pretty wen with our cots
It seems to us though that the water
is q little colder than it was at Bar
1 racks A. No one has slipped on the ice
! but it surely feels as though there
! was ice there. We have a cosy little
place, even though we cannot dodge
those daily freezing showers.
+ Our COMPANY commander and his
assistant are both fine fellows think
4 we arc very fortunate ii having such
good Instructors and good quarters.
+ VS. haze plenty OF good food although
we miss the sweets. / had a nice box
! OF resi- home made candy sent me
/ from Lyndon tire ctner day which j
/ (. issI5rec: ate1 very niucll. We get 10
sugar iscre LACEY unless some clumsy
cooz faprcrs to spill a cupful IN q
/ tiace.sazad saIions Of coFfee az1a that
i deeast haEpen often
~ went ashore Sunday afternoon
until I1:30 D. m. We went to the 7.
! NJ. c. a. and then went out for walk
+ to the wharf. Here we saw few
submarines two batlleships at anchor,
patrol boats and gasolene and steam
! fishing boats. The fishermen were I'M
] loading fish in large baskets, lifted by
I wharf than they were packed in ice
in barrels. From the wharf we went
I to the restaurant that looked the best
to US. Here we had real supper with
a big piece of apple pie to wind up
with After a walk around town we
canle back to the island and to bed.
/ Lately we have been having weather
that we would have in Vermont in
August.
Because we are under winter reg
i uIations now. we haze to wear our
overcoats and gloves. regardless Of the
weather. You may imagine how |