The Grangeville globe. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho) 1907-1922, 1918-01-03
Letter From Former Station
Agent at Fem, to Lee
Rice.
WANTS HOME NEWS
Uncle Sam Furnished Big Feed
For Thanksgiving; Foot
Ball Game.

If twenty days Will do the work
December oath will find this, the only
Christmas present i can send you, at
Fem, and l doubt very much If it
reaches you In time, for yours Of Oct.
2Sth, enclosing clipping from the
Grangeville Globe just came in here
yesterday and your letter made inter
esting reading for me after reaching
camp yesterday evening, after a hard
days work You would be surprised
to see how hard ] can work at times,
for don't remember that / ever show
ed any signs of such activity at Fem.
Well / feel lucky tonight, some of
the boys managed to ''swipe" enough
rough boards to make a writing table
for our camp hut" and instead Of sit
ting on a bunk and writing ON my
knees by the light of Pickering
candle / can write this in luxury at
a table with bench to sit on but the
light is not much as candles are still
Of the same power.
l thank you very much for the letter
and all the news Lee, and will be glad
to have you write often and wish my
friends would do so also for a soldier
sure does like to hear from home and
any place in the good old U. s. A. is
home to the soldier now.
Well feel like writing to you and
not telling you about our Thanksgiving
dinner would be doing Uncle Sam an
injustice. You probably know it has
been the practice for years for every
soldier to receive a regular turkey din
ner while in service wherever he might
be and this year was no exception.
Our regular army rations, while good,
and all coming from the United States
with the exception of bread, for which
-four is furnished to the French baker
les, consists of bacon, beans and rice
to a great extent anu a fellow some
times gets rather tired of the same
old things, day in and day out, but on
Thanksgiving day we sure did have
some feed. We worked all forenoon on
some work located about a mile from
camp then went into camp, had light
lunch of soup and coffee, a football
game between the best teams in the
vicinity, which were teams from our
company and from the marines located
nearby; both OF us have some noted
football players from some of the big
college teams. The game, one of tht
best I've seen for years resulted in q
victory for our company by 10 to
tell you what we had you can hardly
believe it: Mock turtle soup. turkey
with dressing, mashed potatoes. sal
mon and apple salads, stewed onions
peas, mince pies, three kinds of cake
walnuts. hazelnuts, cheese, raisins, figs
punch and coffee, and several things
l can't remember, all of which YOU
Uncle Samuel shipped across to giv'
his boys one real feed and to keep hi,
promise good; to say that we appreci
ated 1t would be putting it very mild
we were overjoyed and the fact tina
we had what is considered the hes
cook In the regiment gave us an oppor
tunlty to have as guests some of tn,
high officers, one of which, an old arm.
man In his speech at the dinner sait
we would probably be used very clos
TO the front line trenches sometime
tdeleted by censorr and that he wa
OF the opinion that we would be eatin,
our next Thanksgiving dinner at home
l only hope we will and that 1t cal
DE accomplished with the minimum
loss OF life / believe l will be per
m1tted to say that our work is pro
gressing rapidly and everything vii
be In shape to handle the big arm.
when 1t gets to coming good and stron
and IL you could see the amount o
material which is being used and tn
extent of the work involved you woul,
not be. surprised at the high cost o
the amount Of money needed for sue
an undertaking. Last week I had tn
extreme pleasure of being boss over
bunch of 100 Chinese laborers, and be
fore the week was out l was gOin
around talking to myself, If anybod
ever wants me to herd another bunc
OF Chinks I'm going to hit him with
brick. Another week was detaile
along with two other men from on
company to stay with and instruct
company Of old army calvary boys VIII
are camped near here and who wer
assisting in the work, this was som
joe too, for the old time soldier don
believe IN doing much in the way Q
manual labor outside of that connecte
with the army as it is generally known
Most of these boys were from the mid
die states and Kansas and Texas.
didn't talk to any of them who kne'
any Of the western riders, though
maybe would. for as rule there