The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-03-07

III AOAAOWAAiSo ACOCC1 11ctO OCCII IO
ceived from Corporal w. w. Miller of
! the Provisional Motor Transport Co.,
now in France by Mrs N. HKaiser
and will be of interest to many be-
cause it comes from Brest, France,
SO much discussed in the newspapers
at present-Because of the length on
ly abstracts from the letter will be
given:
Brest, France
Jan. 9th, 1919
Dear Friends:
l suppose you are having deep snow
now. 1t hardly seems to me like win
ter here. Ever since | have been
over here it has seemed to me like
a wet Nov. at home. Even now | find
it hard to believe that Christmas has
passed. If my Christmas package
ever comes Git has not yeti may be
convinced then. We have been here
nearly four weeks and I have little
idea when we shall go away again.
Brest is the nearest port of France
to the U. S. A. and | would like to
keep on westward when we move
again. We are supposed to be at
some sort of motor work but we do
very little at it indeed.
We mostly get pretty good food
and suppose enough of it. For 9
bed | have bed-sack filled with corl
shavings and four blankets. We arc
living in barracks with dirt floor ano
two stoves which we keep going most
of the time l wash my own clothes
(not very often of course) and dry
them by the barracks stove, you
would want them washed right ovel
again l have travelled in France
nearly thousand miles, going as
near the front as General Pershing's
Headquarters at Chaumont. For six
weeks | was a Tank Driver at Tank
Center at Bourg near Langres. One
would think that all the soldiers are
doing is going about seeing sights II
they have only the newspapers to tell
Internationally they find something
else for US to do. / find the French
people very interesting but the war
and soldiers-have made them very
mercenary. l quite "pass" the
French women and girls. When l
got her, meaning Brest, and. saw some
American women in Y. M. c. A. 1t
did me a lot of good. I never real
lied before how we'll | like American
girls. They are the only girls IN all
the world The stores look best
from the street as most of the goods
are displayed in the windows and
very attractively too. Prices are so
great thought that l stay mostly out
side
In travelling through this country
one is impressed by the immense a.
mount of war material and rolling
stock here belonging to the U. S. L
have seen many scenes similar to
those of Vermont. The people all
live in stone villages which are quite
near together. Some of the roads are
good If they happen to be narrow,
as is often the case, our trucks have
much trouble in passing each other.
l think the people will be glad when
the last truck starts for home.
All the poorer people wear wooden
shoes-great clumsy affairs. The wo-
men drive into the city wearing lace
caps on their heads and riding in
two wheeled carts with cabbages ETC..
sticking out all around.
Every second building in town con-
tains some sort of "booze joint"
which is a stumbling block to many
of the soldiers. They surely are a
stumbling block to the prosperity of
France! France contains some of
the finest things as well as some Of
the worst things to be found in the
world | never saw such license and
liberty as all France is hampered
with.
| have met coming to this country
Fred Dewhurst and Elias Lyman, Jr.
Constance Votey is in Bordeaux. |
have not met Dr. Albert nor any
other Greensboro boys. DR.. Albert
(Kinney) must rank pretty high a
mong our doctors.
Te wv Glow bara all Cprirp this