Dear Mother:—

The other companies are cheering in the distance, and I suppose I know why. For our company has been spared a great affliction, which would have been very cruel after a hard morning’s work. We came into camp a long hour after everybody else, and had just pitched our tents and had dinner when our captain called us together in a close bunch, and told us that the regimental commander had been dissatisfied with the deployments of the other companies, and was having them out to drill; but that our work had been satisfactory, and that in consideration of our hard service on recent days, we were to be excused. You see we have worked hard on Friday (digging and defending trenches) Saturday (when our skirmish work in the mud and wet was the severest, he said, that a company on the hike has yet had) and today, when we started first and finished last. So I imagine that if it was proposed to include us in this afternoon’s drill the captain fought hard to have us excused. I hope it’s also true that our skirmish work is good. We cheered the announcement and enjoyed our leisure; and now the other companies are expressing their delight at being released from their two hours’ work in a stubble field.

Last night, after I had mailed my letters, I stood about and watched the camp with its always varied picturesqueness—the many fires, the drifting smoke lit up by flames, the groups here and there, the undertones of talk, the singing. The buzzard song has instantly become popular, and the lieutenant’s platoon have a chant of praise to him—I don’t know all the words as yet.

Besides these there have come to us from other companies, and indeed from earlier camps, other ditties, not vicious but unquotable, horribly amusing men’s songs.

I gave up watching at last, and made my bed, which was not so easy as usual, since my poncho, being old, has taken to stiffening in its folds after wetting, and when I shook it out, just plain cracked. Besides, its intimate acquaintance with barb-wire has resulted in various tears, notably a long slit and some “barn-doors.” So seeing its usefulness departing, I chiefly made use of my blankets and overcoat, in which latter I slept, and found myself perfectly warm.

Today we were up earliest, packed in a hurry (which never, however, allows leaving the ground untidy) and were off as an advance flank guard to protect the march of the baggage train and main body on the straight road here, we going on a parallel line over whatever country we found. We marched out of camp, went a mile to the west, and then turned south—and a little ripple of joy went through the company. For it was our first step toward Plattsburg and home. The men are all looking forward to the breaking up of camp—not that they are feeling any hardship, but that they are anticipating the set end of things, and thinking of home life again.

Today’s work will not make an interesting story. We followed our south road till it petered out, passed through pretty glades and around attractive knolls, and finally climbed a steep ascent to where, by a schoolhouse at a corner, we rested for a while. A platoon was sent north against a squad of cavalry; the rest went on, deployed here, deployed there, sent out squads and recalled them, then lay low in ditches and watched the movements of some of the enemy (horsemen and a machine gun) cautiously coming forward along a crossroad against the corner toward which we were heading, and which we knew to be held in strength by our first platoon. They consulted, came on within range, and then sent out a man to reconnoitre. Reaching the corner, he wheeled and dashed back, waving his hat and shouting. A burst of fire from the corner pursued him; and our Squad Seven, crazy to do something, let off a couple of clips at the men on the machine gun, who were frantically trying to turn it about. The cavalry got away, all but their messenger, who was summoned back. As for the machine gun, it would not reconcile itself to capture till, as the captain said, an umpire went out and picked it by hand.

We were given another rest, this time by an odd-looking building which Corder guessed was a creamery. The fact being established, our boys were greatly excited, and some filled their canteens at wholesale prices—surreptitiously, for the thing was quite as wrong though not so reckless as another performance I have seen, the filling of canteens at wells. If we escape typhoid from such water it will be because of the inoculation.

Ordered on again, our platoon was detached and sent across country to come upon the flank or rear of any cavalry that might be lurking for us. We sent out a squad and lost it; then the three remaining squads went on and on and on, and grumblings became louder and louder as the men began to suspect that the leader did not know where he was going, nor what he was trying to do. Good David, mindful of our pact, tried in vain to cheer the boys up; but no, they would grumble, and (as inexorably follows) made their work the harder. It was a long three miles over stiff country, with a fence, usually barb wire, every hundred yards—and bogs! “What made me sore,” says Knudsen at my side at this moment, “was that first swamp we came to. It was perfectly visible, with a good dry meadow on either side to travel in—but Jones had to bring us through it.” Fence, bog, fence, thicket, fence, small pasture with an inquisitive bull (we went across smartly!) fence, rough climb over rocks: such was the order of our going, till at last we heard the captain’s distant whistle, and found the remainder of the company resting comfortably by the roadside waiting for us. But there was no soft place for the second platoon, for on we went at once, two miles more to camp, where the other companies had long since pitched their tents, had fed themselves, and now were streaming out toward town to fill in the chinks in their stomachs. The best ice cream, I am told, is at the millinery store.

For the first time since Friday I was able today to get a swim—or rather a dip in an ice-cold stream, below a broken dam. Picturesque, so many men’s naked bodies, undressing, bathing, dressing, with the rushing stream, the rocky bank, the overhanging trees. Then I cut my toe and had to have it dressed at the doctor’s tent, where I had a glimpse at another side of camp life.

I met one of our fellows coming away grumbling. “My blisters were dressed by an artilleryman who disgusted me with his profanity, and who put the plaster on the wrong spot.” But I was tended, having a more important wound, by one of the doctors. And after my experience I can declare that all doctors are divided into three kinds.

One was a volunteer, one of our own company, by the way, whose feet having given out was transferred to the medical corps, and keeps an especially kindly eye on all H company men. But he being busy, I fell into the hands of the regulars, and had a chance to judge of the opinion common among the rookies—“they treat you like a horse.” Now regular officers must be short and sharp with their men, and the doctors among them are taught to be suspicious by the sojering they necessarily detect. It must be a struggle to keep sweet the milk of human kindness.

The man who dressed my foot had succeeded in remembering that the majority of men were neither cowards nor dishonest. He was considerate of me and of the orderlies under him. But alongside was a scowl. A poor fat bandsman with a lame foot was not excused from marching the next day. The orderly who had mislaid the iodine was scalped. The orderly who had charge of the medicine chest was also scalped. The man whose foot this doctor was dressing was so certainly a man of character and a person of civilian consequence that he was not scalped for presuming to turn his ankle; but I felt the certainty that under actual campaign conditions he would have fared no better than the others. It was borne in upon me that a gentleman who is gentlemanly only to gentlemen is not a gentleman at all.

Though I have not spoken much of them, we have our daily conferences whenever the weather will permit. Today we first had battalion conference, when Major Goring spoke of recent manoeuvres—and we men were interested to see that even he spoke of Friday as an extremely successful day, and Saturday as an unusually hard one. Then supper, then bed-making (which is desirable before the light goes—by the way, I am writing no longer in the afternoon but the evening) then regimental conference, when Major Downes spoke against time for an hour (and mighty well, upon the Philippines and army experiences there) in the hope that General Wood would come, which he didn’t. Now I am writing while sitting upon a firkin of apples that I had sent from our neighbor Williams, waiting for the squad to come and help me eat them. Very bad writing this, I know, by the light of the fire, holding the paper first folded, then bent, then skewed, anything to stiffen it and catch the light, while every moment I must shift it as I move my hand along the line.

The boys are gathering for a feed—the apples, Some honey, bread, shredded wheat, cream from the local creamery (Knudsen’s inspiration), the first such feast since the hike began. We have invited our neighbors, Squad Nine. So, since there is no more to tell, I will close this.

“Pass up your cups,” says Clay.

Love to you from