Letter to Mother from Witley
Witley
15-4-17
Dear Mother:–
I received your letter from niagara yesterday before I went over to tin town to get a hair cut. I read it. as I waited on my turn for the chair, I have my favorite barber and never let any of the other men do my work.
I am very glad you went home this spring it will be great for you but should have been longer, we will try to have the dough you speak of next fall and you will have to take a longer visit some place next winter you have a change each year now you have earned it scores of times in your life and I think this is the first time you have been on a real visit.
I hope Ted has a good time at Regina I wish he had Hurds address they have a home there Eula is a stenographer and is work very hard she does not like it at all.
You had rather bad luck on your trip missing the buss and not being able to check you trunk
I wrote Mrs Phillips a letter the A.M. between 12 midnight and 6 A.M.
Now the transport, Well to begin with I volenteered to get into the m.gun detatchment before they took me on it.
I done the same with the transport but got turned down because I had taken a special coarse well I prayed about this and asked God if he wanted me to get in the transport section that he would make clear the way. Well things run on and the Major had said he would let me go the M.G. officer said I could go, and the Transport officer said he would take me, but the Adjutant did not want to let special men go on the job, One day the Sergeant said tomorrow we go to the ranges to shoot. I walked up to him and said Sergeant I am not going to shoot this coarse, they can put me in the clink or any thing they like but I am not going out, then I went to the officer I told him about the same so he let me off, and I got right on the transport, I first had a pack mule, then the poorest team in the section then a team that there best horseman tryed to handle the one well I could drive them all right they did not bother me but it was rough work maby to look on some times. Then they put me on no. 2 team they took them away from a lad from Shounavon and put him on a mule team. They are a fine pair of mairs about 1200 lbs brown and bay keen and good but nervouse. I have had them out twice and they say they can see the difference now,
They may be one case in a thousand in the army where they pick out the man that is entitled to the stripes but if they did that with me in this batt. I was the first man. it is the man that has the pull with the Officers of the section that get what ever is going and he might be the poorest stick in a hundred ways that is in the section. It an’t any honor to wear stripes neither does it prove a man is competint Our corperal in the transport is a nice old man but with out braging I could take one strip and do things in 50% better shape three days after I got my stripe than he ever will do them it an’t in him and there is fellows that could beat me.
It surely makes lots of use feel better to have the u.s.a. in. why the other night I went into the Y.M.C.A. and there was a concert on, I looked up to the stage and there was a big union jack in the center of the back ground and a stars and stripes half the size on each side you don’t know the pang that it sent thru me to see the good old stars and stripes up away over here.
They have torn down a cupple of u.s.a. flags that were put up at two different concerts in the mess room a crazy old Batt. quarter master he an’t responsible so it never offended me it only proved what we all thot right along that no one was home in his garret.
I was reading a chapter the 3rd of Ephesians just before I came over to this recreation room, and I just longed to read it to the boys it is a fine chapter. I will get the chances yet there is always a way if it is Gods will and I am will to do anything he tells me to do. I pray each day that he will quicken my concience so I will here his still small voice when ever he speaks to me.
Well bye bye Mother dear as ever your loving son Laurie