East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1918-10-30
Somewhere in France,
September "a, 1918.

September "a. 1918.
Dear Cricket:
received your letter and was glad
as usual to hear from you again and
as this seems to be a pretty favorable
time to write. 1 Will drop you a few
lines.
This is the calm before the storm.
Everything is quiet as can be right
now. but in a few short hours, about
midnight, we are to open up on them
again, so you see. 1 am writing this
'Just, before the battle, Cricket
1 am down in a dugout about as
deep as n. Y. subway. Up stairs our
guns are all set and we are waiting
tn order to start them belching their
screaming shells into Germany. That
order may come before 1 can finish
this, but we don't expect it for at least
three hours yet. You see we do all
OF most of our artillery work at night
You could never imagine what / am
up to just now. There are five of us
living in this dugout and we are maxi
ing blackberry jelly. The hillside is
just covered with them. so to pass
away the time and break the monot-
ony of waiting around after we got
cur big guns into position, we went
ont and gathered about a gallon of
berries boiled them and squeezed the
Juice out of them. Now we are boii-
Ing them again with some sugar we
bummed from the cooks. so we ex-
pect to have black berry jelly for
breakf fast is a German shell doesn't
come along and spoil our plans.
All the boys went out the other day
and we gathered enough berries to
make a cobbler for us all and say
Cricket it was good
l want to get some more and make
some cordial. Then we can all get
stewed Xmas, but l haven't any yeast
tc start it.
have my mouth full of paraphine
gum We chew about half the can
dies we are issued, for gum, and find
it quite a confection.
This dugout warfare is new to ms.
We are on the eve of our third big
drive and the other (censored) were
open warfare so we are getting into
something new in living in deep.
damp dugouts, but there is nothing
we won't try once.
was in the hospital for couple
of weeks The water we get on the
front Is not always pure and I got
some that was contaminated to some
degree and along with some real hot
weather I took down with malaria I
was little too anxious to get back
with the boys so / talked them into
letting me, go too soon. just arriv-
ed in time to participate in another
scrap eand when we scrap we get no
rest 50 it almost got me down again,
but I pulled through and now 1 feel
fit as ever
We have some queer weather over
here It rains and is muddy for a
week or two. then it clears up for a
day. The nights are getting rather
chilly and are very typical autumn
nights with a big, bright moon. Just
the kind Of nights that make me want
to be back home.
We have continual concerts around
here. First a wild scream or whine, |
then a big ca blam or a ca bloc or
some such noise. Then, too. the air Is
fun of barking. humming planes and |
il they are Hun machines the Amer
fcane are setting up deafening bar
rage. trying to drive them back. They
succeed. Then when our
aviators go over their lines they shoot
ar us. Big excitement all the time.
Well, dear Cricket my paraphine
gum is getting stale. the jelly almost
done and 1 must get up. and tend to it.