Letter to Mother from Dugout in France
#782373
Dugout in France
8-13-17[sic]
Dear Mother:–
I am considerably to full tonight and it is some time since I had supper but I felt like eating and had lots of hash the we call mystery and good gravy with bread I drank to much tea I think after. Then I went to the y. and bot some biscuits I only ate 3 but it all helps to make a man feel like he had eaten a christmas dinner,
It did sprinkle some as we marched in this evening but we were on a fatigue party so we did not have any equipment but haver sack and gas mask and respirator.
You should see use carrying sand bags of bricks and piling them in piles by the roads thru the devastated villages some of the boys got some good souvenirs but I did not get any. May later. we must work about six hours a day and march about five miles round trip. It would be all right if it lasted until duration,
A river runs by a road, we cross it in one place but rivers are very scarse in France it seems to me the ground lyes a lot like our country out there but the part of England I was in was far different. All tho we see binders cutting some times I can’t realize that it is the middle of Aug. We won’t get any cold weather here untill after Xmas, because it is warmer here than in England and it was like that there last year and the coldest winter in 40 years the old setlers told me.
I have never been in the front line yet. but you have an idea how close I have been by the distance from your house to the main road east of house.
Well bye bye Mother dear as ever your loving son Laurie.
[margin] Flower picked where the big shells burst L.
7.30 A.M. 8-15-17
Well Mother:–
It is cloudy but warm this a.m. but we got a light rain last night it dryes very quickly. the mud is slipry but not sticky here which makes traveling lighter than some places we have been in canada
I come close to getting hurt yesterday. I was tearing down the remains of an old factory built of clolk[sic] blocks and brick but they are all loosened up now so you can starte at the top of a wall and take each row of blocks off just as they come well I had worked a lot in the a.m. on this wall and I slept untill fall in, after I ate dinner, then I made a be line for my wall waking up as I went. I started to climb a big shaft with hundreds of lbs of pullies on it well when I got about 6 ft up when down we came wall and all I lit in a big boiler and a big dust went up. the corperal says is any one hurt, I said Know Gilis says if it had been any body but you Laurie he would have got killed. I don’t know several of the boys spoak to me about being careful in the four noon, but I was not toutched any way, and couldent seem to realize what was taking place or I could have jumped. but I lit safe any way. I guess I was dozy from snoozing when I should have been reading, but it is awful tempting when you have our ground sheet to take a snooze, when the sun shines bright at noon and you are full of beans bread butter jam and bacon,
I thot I was in good shape physically last fall, but I am stronger and tougher now than ever. I havent thot of coughing once in France and had positively no cold in my head once for one day, now how you can account for that is one on me to sleep the way I do no matter if there is a hurricane going thru the dug out, I wear my cap some times maby then for week I wont put it on.
I put my feet into my tunic sleeves and button the tunic around my legs then I ly on one side of the gray coat and roll up in it. I sleep on the ground sheet. always. I put on an extra flanel shirt each night that is what I use for an under shirt and sweater combind.
I think this climate is a lot better than out in England but I can’t tell why, we had a bother with our throats in England we were always choaked up. but not here,
Well bye bye Mother dear, we get our mail each day all the time there has not been over a half dozen days we havent had it since I came to France
as ever your loving son Laurie.