Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1918-06-28
US. War Stamps in Every Home
LETTERS FROM SOLDIER BOYS
Lieutenant Lang and Edmund
FOss Write Home From France

OOihPoi' 1NhSS @AAAAAi' Ni'ANASAi
Train, A. E. F. France.
Dear Brother Will:
Your very welcome letter of
April 7th, l just finished reading,
and to be sure | was more than
glad to hear from you again, and to
know that you were all well; even
though it was a month ago that
your letter was written, it helps a
whole lot to get them just the same.
am so busy now that l have
barely time to sleep, but l have just
dismissed my office force for dinner
and while | am waiting for my
orderly to bring my dinner, | will
try and write a little. and then a
little more after dinner before the
other boys get back.
You see l am now Agent Officer
for the whole Train, and | have
about two thousand enlisted men to
pay besides all of the officers, and
this month we have about five
hundred new men of the second
draft, who were sent to US as re-
placements and the greater part of
them haven't been paid for three
months, and some of them haven't
been paid since they were drafted.
There are none that have been paid
since they embarked and sailed for
overseas service, so that means that
l have to compute their pay for part
of the time on the rate of pay for
each grade in the States, and then
after they sailed they get 20 per-
cent increase.
Some of our new men have been
transferred three or four times and
in some cases they had changes of
grades, which have to be figured
and then there is six different kinds
of allottments, three different
classes of Liberty Bonds, stoppages
by Court-Martial, collections for
Post Laundries and several other
things, such as lost Quartermaster
property and lost Ordinance, which
all have to be kept account of in a
separate account.
AfterI have gone through all of
the above process of misery, and
get the whole thing simmered down
to some one sum of real money, (Cur-
rency) | have to multiply each in
dividual amount by 5.71, or the
rate of exchange to transfer it
into French currency, that means
carrying each multiplication to four
decimal places, and there is such a
shortage of small change in France
that we can't get anything smaller
than a so centime piece, or one
half franc, so have to enter the
amount on the roll figured to the
nearest so centimes, and keep an
account of all the centimes that |
drop. After this is done | have to
make a change list, for each roll, so
that will haye the correct change
to pay with.
The rate of exchange has been
$40 for long time, but this month
it changed to 5.7l, that is $1.0O U. S.
Currency equals $40 francs, and |
got my own roll all made and figured
at the old rate changed before any
of the other rolls came in and then
the rate changed and | had to make
it all over again and figure it at the
new rate, and | only had fifty-one
sheets in it for my company for one
month, and believe me | was some
mad. Well bill" the boys have
come again and it is one o'clock, so
l will ring off for now and finish
later.
Well here l am again, after a
hard afternoons work, but am feel
ing fine and | got along very nicely.
| will be able to get my rolls ready
so that | can turn in my change list
by tomorrow noon, get the money
the next morning and start paying
off. | will have considerable over
$50,000.00 of Uncle Sans money to
spend this month, and if | could use
for anything that l wished to, it
wouldn't be half bad, but when you
have to give your personal receipt
for it and then turn in an exact
account of every cent of it before
you can get your receipt back again
it is different.
LoJ n ,uoy Jorf,,1 c,,.,r,,o - C..