The courier-index., 1918-10-04
Letters From Our Soldiers

ups and downs since l left you the seventh day of March Many times have I wished that I was back with you, but wishes don't get me there.
 ''This is the worst war I have ever been in, but if I get out all together I will be much the wiser for the round.
 "I suppose Mack kept you posted about me when 1 was in the states, so I will take up the trip from your side of the Atlantic.
 q can't describe how I felt when we pulled out and the coast of the old U S. began to fade away, but you can rest assured that I will not feel the same way when 1 see that coast again. The ocean is whole lot bigger than it looks on the map, and I don't wonder at Columbus men wanting to pitch him overheard and return home, for it gets old riding day and night and seeing nothing but water The stuff would be all right if it would be still, but it is all the time quivvering like it is scared I think the submarines have gotten it all stirred up.
 We wore life preservers all the time on the ship. They fit around our necks so if we have to take to the water our heads would stay up. I am of the opinion that we had to wear them to keep from getting mashed on the boat, for we were damned up like canned goods in a cross roads store, and the life pre- nnx 6r1ff frnt mashed
 'I kept everything I got on my stomach and could have kept more I wish you could have been at Liver pool when we came off the boat, and heard the band touch up Dixie, you would have forgotten your seventy some-odd years.
 England is a nice country and l want to see some more of it before I come home I would enjoy myself more for I can talk to the people, but here I cant 'parlevoo' this lan- guage. I went to a French store to buy a wash pan and being naturally bright I thought I could make them cOmpre (French for understand, but oh, my, the girl clerk got down half the stuff in the store before she
 compred
 "We were at a place in this coun- try away back from the lines for three weeks, and believe me it was labor there. was glad to get on getting shot than work six and a half days out of seven.
 T have moved several times lately and if we keep it up will soon see all of this country At present l am stationed right up close to our front line trenches. I have been here about a week. Three of us have quarters and no boss. We are away from our company and eating with another company, and walk about as far as I did in Marianna for our meals. It is quite different here, though, for we have to carry our gas masks and rifles, hundred rounds of ammunition and wear our tin hats. And then it is different when we get the eats for we get bread or hardtack and stew. They have an old pot that they can't cook anything in but stew. Tell Mrs Farrar that it would do me a hundred dollars worth of good to see a biscuit, and make | it two hundred for a juicy sweet potato.
 'I am in the best health that have ever been in. weighed 161 in England and believe me l would beat that now. This life and getting
 rid of my appendix is the reason and not the eats. I will help you
 smoke your pipe when I get back. 'T have the easiest job that ever had. but it is dangerous, for there is only one explosion between me and eternity.
 "Tell Mack to bring an adding ma | chine along so he can count the bullets that come out of machine gun. They make about as much noise as a hundred cackling hens on Sunday morning when you want to | sleep.
 'Tt is great to watch the anti-air craft guns trying to hit an alrplane There is something doing in the noise l line when the heavy artillery eats something that upsets it's stomach Believe me. they make some camou 1 flage thunder My work is not at dangerous as the infantry, but 1t is