Letter 95

                                                                                               

Letter  95

                                                                                                                                  Vandiers, France

                                                                                                                                 November 28, 1918

To My Dear Sweetheart,

                Thanksgiving once more and a little rain on the side.   Since writing to you I’ve received a number of letters from you:  Oct. 31, Nov.1, Nov. 3rd, one from Mother, one from Jay, and one from my other girl.  It brought me some very bad news, telling of the death of her dear sweetheart ‘over here’. Listen dear, if you see her try and cheer her up. I have written her a very encouraging letter.  I hope she will be feeling better right now. It surely is too bad, but I say it could have been worse.   God saw fit to take him from her.  

                Dear I surely have appreciated those letters, especially those of yours and of Mother’s.  For I read them nearly every day.  They seemed to be filled with so much comfort and good cheer,  just keep on  sending  as many as you wish with all the news, for here in Vandiers, we can neither find time to buy anything or even get a newspaper.  For there are no civilians here yet, and no stores to go to spend your money.  I have a whole pocket of French money, or French wallpaper, as we call it, for it has so many pretty pictures. I do not know whether you have ever imagined yourself in a deserted village where you are free, as far as civilian law is concerned.  For we go, get what we want, and leave what we wish.  But we try not to destroy any of the property, as we’ve seen done by many.

                There are no girls to bother us, if I remember correctly it has been over three weeks since we have even seen a French girl.  I do not know what one would look like, but I will survive.   Mother told me to leave the French girls alone.  As if she knew the kind of town I was in and how I would like to get a peep at one.  She would say, ’go right ahead my dear boy and see one.’  But you know what she meant. Just the same as I did, dear.   One never knows what true advice he receives from his dear mother until he is away from her and can see for himself wherein he’s wrong and she is right.

                Last Sunday afternoon I wanted to take a walk to the large deserted town, but it is filled with soldiers now, waiting there move on. I heard there was a Y.M.C.A. there.  I thought, now is the chance for me to get some cookies and candy, but to our grief it had closed at noon and would not be open until 5:30, so we were out of time. The only thing we got was a newspaper.

 

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