The Topeka state journal., 1918-10-26

| nave the crisp Banque de France franc
notes in my pocketbook once more.
Major Going of Topeka, brought the
| money to the regiment.
Il have just witnessed a medieval
custom-the town crier. He stops in
front of nearly every house in our vii
IaSe every evening at this time and
! spiels off to the natives in German. He
tells them the town mayors orders
and L guess he occasionally springs
| war news on them.
| ~ esterday l received a letter dated
July 2. which had been sent to 13O
Infantry instead of the 13O Field Ar
tillery. But to show how well or
san1zed army postal service has be-
come, the letter, after being sent to
a dead letter office over here was
traced to me.
The front is not nearly so blood
curdling as l have been led to believe.
! OF course, our sector is a quiet one,
| but except for an occasional shell
| winch whistles over us, or battles be-
tween boche airplanes and anti-air
craft guns and allied machines, it is
just like any other pastoral place in
| France.
Il see Wilbur Cole and Douglas
bowman every day. I mess with the
supply company a large part of the
time and SO do they.
Captain Mills is not the personnel
| officer now, he has again been
made supply officer of the regiment.
The personnel officer, my boss, is Cap
| tain Pomeroy.
Bob Beine and I are living togeth-
er with couple or three sergeant
! majors and color sergeapts, in the
attic of an old barn. We are fairly
comfortable with plenty of hay, and
we have named the place the Chateau
de Ia Cootie. OF course we haven't
met any of the family, yet but you nev-
| er can tell.
| We have to climb a ladder to get
to our suite of rooms and boudoirs
in the Chateau de Ia Cootie. We have
one small window. The floor is not
clean and the walls are bare and the
roof of thatch. BY shutting down the
window and blanketing the door, we
are able to use candles for reading
| and playing cards, and writing at
night. Such Is life at the front
Il had a talk today with a real
American lady, Y M C. A. worker
from Boston, who is associated here
with Henry Allen. It is certainly a
relief to get a chat with a real re-
fined American woman after hearing
this continuous cong1omeration of
French and German all the time. I
don't mind the FreDeh so much, but
the Dutch get on my nerves with their
low cultural sounds. These German
| women have big feet, too.
I'm on the staff of the Stars and
Stripes in a contributing capacity
that is when I can find time. Re-
ceived very nice letter from the edi-
tor who asked me to submit feature
stories from time to time. I don't
know where I get my pull with the
newspaper-first trying to get me to
transfer to Paris as an assistant edi-
tor. and then asking me to write for
them.
saw Mike Crawford the other day.
He's doing mighty well; his commits
sion hasn't spoiled him a bit. I think
he will get a promotion soon and I
understand that he deserves it,
In letter to his mother written
on September 5. Sergeant Jarrell says:
I'VE have left our quiet sector along
the front and are now a few miles
from another front miles away from
. our former sector. I slept last night
in a pup tent in a beautiful forest
!; alongside an historic river and it
rained and I slept on for fifteen long
hours.
"The raising of the age limit and
lowering it also in America ought to
make the year 1919 the time for Kai-
ser Wilhelm to sing his swan song.
hope we get dug in comfortably for
! the winter and next spring we will
make them bite the dust.
about the time you get this I'll
/
, stripe on my left arm
The following quotations are from
| a letter written on September s by
Sergeant farrell: arch was trans
ferred from Battery A to Headquar-
ters company today and appointed bat
! TALON sergeant major. which is quite
( a nice promotion. I was glad to see
Arch get over to the headquarters
COMPANY, especially with this promo
ton. He is sergeant major of the
first battalion: Phil Sproat has the
s second battalion and Bob Bcine the
: third battalion No sooner do I catch
up with Arch in rank than he scoots
| way ahead.
"I have not been able to write much
of late. We have been on the move
most of the time. and have had to
make up for the time lost in MOVING
by working day and night when we
strike a stop of twenty-four hours or
more.
CT saw a wonderful sight yesterday
"a large number of British planes
soaring away above US. I counted
them and the number was amazing
Just like a flock of birds. I never