Letter to Mother from Somewhere in France

6-24-17[sic]
Somewhere in France
There is a service held here at 6.30

Dear Mother:–

We had a march to day of about 12 ½ miles which hit use quite stiff in a way we had to easy a time for a cupple of weeks but tomorrow we will be all right again, I slept from 9.30 a.m. after breakfast untill about 2 or 3 oclock when I got up and had a good supper it don’t seem to be like Sunday to me, I slept in a nice clover pasture lots of thick grass the sun shone soft and warm but not hot. where we are betteted the fence has been hit with a big shell earlier in the war and knocked out about a rod in three different directions of a combination brick wall 8 ft high and 14 in thick in this shape

the bombs were droping about 1 ½ away today we could see them and we could count hundreds of them bursting among our air plains but this will all so be old to use I guess.

There is good Y.M.C.A.'s here I am in one now but I carried my paper from the last one. It is great to have the transport carry your packs to look on at the front from 20 miles away you would think that heat lightning was flashing right along up about 8 axe handles high te. he.

We meat boys every day that left use last fall in drafts they tell use about the different luck of other of the fellows we knew.

One of the boys that was in our draft is killed an other lad that was on the transport with me is wounded it don’t take long to change things, They went up the line two weeks ago. Well bye bye Mother dear as ever your loving son Laurie.

Later    We had a real good service a boy like my self took the meeting and carried on very success fully because he had the spirit of God in his heart and not one man in the hut but could feel it and nothing in the world grips men like the emotion of the man who talks from his heart and shows in his face the love he has for his master and his fellowman.

Mother you can never in any manner get the idea of France as it is when you see it, As I just sat and ate a sandwich in a cafe a few steps from this hut I thot the folks at home have nothing like the right conseption of France. Out side of the roar of the guns we have just as pretty and far more so a landscape to look out over than at home and the sun is bright every one is cheerful and life is more sincere than in Sask. I haven’t yet met that road with the line of muddy wounded soldiers going along thru devastated eras that I had pictured. and I pictured my self a more sober man thinking of facing death in a more serious state of mind. but instead I am aglow with the joy of Christian service. And the wemen seem quite cheerfull here all tho the flirting girl in France I have never yet met they have bad girls but I have never seen one to know that she was bad and I have seen no houses of prositution all tho I have heard roumers that I beleave may have been but roumers. About every other house is a rum house or in other words about every other house sells meals and beer. but the wemen seem to not know that it is any thing wrong little boys any size smoke and the refinement is away behind the times 100 yrs but we do not need refinement to have pure hearts at all.

L.