Ring Lardner

“ But what difference is it going to make Al for me to look good and have things neat when I am sleeping between a man that if he can ever stay awake till I doze off he will dig a trench system in my chest with a stilleto and on the other side of me they's a bird that the minute the lord says Fire he will make me look like a soup strainer. ”

“ Sebastian done real work for a liveing and you couldn't expect her to look like Sarah Bernhart but Florrie is the kind that if she takes a dislike towards somebody its good night to them and it don't do no good to tell her that a person can't help their looks and that is all the more reason you should try and not hurt their feelings. ”

“ FRIEND AL: Well Florrie is still in the hay yet and little Al is playing with himself on the floor and reading the pictures in the Sunday a.m. paper and I thought I would sleep late this a.m. but when a man gets in the habit of wakeing up early you get so as you can't sleep after you wake up once and thats the way it was with me. ”

“ So he says "Well I guess I will put you down as a pitcher and when we need one in a hurry we will know where to find one." But I don't know when they would need a pitcher Al unless it was to throw one of them bombs and believe me when it comes to doing that I will make a sucker out of the rest of these birds because if my arm feels O.K. they's nobody got better control and if they tell me to stick one in a German's right eye that is where I will put it and not in their stomach or miss them all together like I was a left hander or something. ”

“ So I figure the best way to do is to tell her I will meet her and I will take her somewheres to dinner and while we are at dinner I can tell her the truth about me being married and it will be much better to tell her to her face then write it in a letter because it would sound pretty hard in black and white but the only thing is we have got to find some quite spot so as if she makes a seen or something they won't be no crowd around to pop their eyes out at us. ”

“ I suppose I would of been a grass widower long ago if I was ugly and how will it be if I get shot up in the war and Florrie would sew me for a bill of divorce on the grounds that I didn't have no nose to smell the cooking.
Well Al after they had gone Sebastian made the remark that I had a beautiful wife and I couldn't help from feeling kind of sorry for him so I says "Never mind old boy" I said to him "as long as your Mrs. is a good mother and willing to work you should not worry if she is no Eva Tanguay." ”

“ Well Al I am going to break into a new game football. They are getting up a club here in camp to play against the Great Lakes navy and the Camp Custer club up in Mich. and they want all the men thats played football to come out and try for the club here. Well I never played but I told them I did and they won't know the difference when they see me because when a man is a born athelete they can play any game and especially a college Willy boy game like football. I seen one of their college games out to the university in Chi once and a man built like I could of made a sucker out of both clubs. ”

“ Well Al I decided to not play on the football club here after all. In the 1st. place theys 3 or 4 privates trying for the club and I don't believe in mixing up with them to much and if Whiting and them other officers wants to all right, but that don't make it all right in my mind. And besides I figured it wasn't fair to either myself or Capt. Nash to run the risk of getting hurt in some fool game to say nothing about learning a lot of fool signals that don't mean nothing but just learning them takes up your time that you ought to spend thinking how to improve your command. ”

“ This a.m. we spent a half hour listening to a speech about the German gas and of course you have read about the gas Al and it isn't like regular gas but its some kind of poison that the Germans lets it loose in the air and it floats across Nobodys land and comes to the other trenchs and if you haven't got no mask its good night but we are all going to have masks to wear so the gas can't hurt us. Red says thats one thing where the Russians have got it on us and they don't have to be scared of dying from gastritis because the Germans haven't no gas fast enough to catch up with them. ”

“ Sebastian hasn't spoke to nobody or looked at nobody today and when a man acts like that it means they are makeing plans. Well Al I only wish he was planning to dessert from the army and if I seen him trying to make his get away I wouldn't blow no buggle to wake up the guards. ”

“ Camp Grant, Oct. 12.
FRIEND AL: Well old pal I am writeing this in the Y.M.C.A. where a man has got some chance to hear yourself think as they say but if you try and write over in the barracks if they don't joggle your arm or tip your seat over for a joke they are all the time jabbering back and forth in foreign languages till you get so balled up that instead of writeing a letter a man is libel to make out his will in Eskimo or something. ”

“ I can't tell you what I am going with or when we go or where we sail from because they won't leave us give out none of that dope and all as I can say is that about 30 of us has been picked to fill up a unit and we leave here tomorrow and meet them at the place where we sail from. Well Al its a big honor to be 1 of the men picked and it means they have got a lot of confidence in me and you can bet they are not sending no riff and raff over there but just picked men and I will show them they didn't make no mistake in choosing me. ”

“ How is that for brains Al and I suppose if a man was up all night watching a corpse or something this bird would make you stay awake all the next day so you wouldn't get sleepy.
For dinner we had roast chicken and sweet potatoes and cream corn and biscuits and coffee and for supper they was bake beans with tomato sauce and bread and pudding and cake and coffee and the grub is pretty fair only a man can't enjoy it because you got to eat to fast because if theys anything left on your plate when the rest of them birds gets through you got to fight to keep it from going to the wrong address. ”

“ But you are the bird thats takeing the chance and if you can keep smileing we would be a fine bunch if we broke down and begun to whine and I don't suppose theys a man amongst us that has thought about danger to themselfs but its all whats going to happen to you."
Well Al thats the kind of a bunch to have under you and it makes a man think of Napoleon and how his men looked up at him. ”

“ But if you tell them all you know right at first they won't do nothing to you only of course you will be a prisoner there in Germany till the war is over and they make you work your head off without no food and they don't even feed the guards because they want to keep them mad at the prisoners so as they will make them work harder and every time you act like you was loafing or something the guards scratchs their initials in you with their bayonet. ”

“ Jack Keefe.
Camp Grant, Oct. 22.
FRIEND AL: Well Al we had some lessons in trench takeing today and I feel like I had been in a football game or something. We would climb up out of the trenchs that was supposed to be the U.S. trenchs and run across Nobody's Land and take the trenchs that was supposed to be the German trenchs and clean them out with rifles and bayonets and bombs and of course we didn't have no real rifles and bombs but if we had of and they had been any Germans in the trenchs it would of been good night to them. ”

“ Well Al I can't waist no more time writeing to you and I am going to meet Florrie in Houston in a little while and it may be for the last time so I will say good bye to you now and say good bye to Bertha for me and she ought to be thankful she has got a husband that stayed at home and didn't enlist. And if we have good luck and nothing happens to us I will write you once in a while from the other side. ”

“ Well Al Shorty Lahey was trying to make me believe this bird was a bad egg and that they called him Nick the Blade because he always went a round with a knife and whittled you if you looked X eyed at him but the next time Shorty wants to kid somebody he better try it on some yapp that hasn't been in the big league and I let him think he was stringing me just to see how far he would go with it but if he thought he had me fooled the shoes was on his feet not mine. ”

“ I suppose you will wonder what I am getting at Al. Well on the train comeing from Rockford yesterday I was setting with Shorty Lahey and he was on leave to and I know its a mistake sometimes for a officer to pal a round with their men but I set with him on the train because I can't stand it to hurt a man's feelings and Shorty's hearts in the right place with all his jokeing and etc. So we set down together on the train and got to talking things over and he says "Well Keefe you have got to be a corporal and that means you have made good and I wish I was in your shoes." ”

“ Well Al I suppose you read in the papers about that troop train that a gang of spys tried to wreck it and it was a train full of burglars from here that we sent down to Camp Logan to fill up the national guards and the papers made out like the people that tried to wreck it was pro German spys but if you had of seen the birds that was on the train you wouldn't believe it because they wouldn't no Germans waist their time on them because they will all kill each other anyway before they get to France. ”

“ So I went back to the flat and looked for the janitor to let me in and when you don't want janitors they are always snooping around at your coat tails but when you do want them they are hideing in the ash bbl. or something. So it took me about a hour to find this bird and another hour to get him to open the door up for me and of course they wasn't nobody home so the janitor says maybe I could find out where they went from the neighbors so I rung the woman across the hall's bell and she come to the door. ”

“ The corporals and sargents we had at first was men from the regular army and they been sending them away lately and now some of the boys from the ranks gets their chance. In order to get a corporal or a sergent a man has got to have the drills down perfect besides being a perfect physical specimen and good appearance and a man that the rest of the boys will look up to him and respect him and a man that don't know the meaning of the word fear. Well Al I must of filled the bill and I will show Gen. ”

“ If it hadn't been for setting a example to my command I believe I would of pretended like I was sick and when you are sick they make somebody else carry your junk and leave you ride in a wagon thats O.K. for a private that don't care what the rest of them think of him but a corporal has got to keep going and try to keep his men going and when you got a bunch of sap heads like mine it keeps a man on the jump to tend to them. Red Sampson was so bad that I had to keep after him all the while and finely I pulled a good one on him I said "Sampson everybody in the whole regt. ”

“ I got the dope tonight from Red Sampson and he heard it from one of the men that was on guard yesterday and this man heard the Col. telling Capt. Gould of Co. B that General Pershing had sent for the best looking regt. out here and Gen. Barry had recommended our regt. and from what Red says we will probably go in a week or so and he don't know if we are going by the way of the Atlantic or the Pacific but all as I hope is that we get there before the war is over. ”

“ Here is the scheme when a man has got a family the govt. keeps out 1/2 of your pay every month or more if you want them to and then the govt. sticks the same amt. in with it and sends it to your wife or who ever gets it. Say you are a private and getting about $30.00 per mo. and you tell the govt. to keep out $15.00 of it. So the govt. keeps $15.00 and sticks another $15.00 with it and sends it to your family.
Well Al I am going to tell them to keep out my whole $30.00 per mo. ”

“ Somebody had a cornet and another fellow had a trombone and a couple of them had mouth organs and we all sung along with them and we sung patriotic songs like Jonah Vark and Over There and when they started on the Star Spangled Banner the guy I was setting along side of him hollered for them to not play that one and I thought he was a pro German or something and I was going to bust him but somebody asked him why shouldn't they play it and he says because he couldn't stand up and he wasn't the only one either Al. ”

“ Speaking about baseball Al I suppose you seen where the White Sox have cinched the penant and they will be splitting the world serious money while I am drawing $30.00 per mo. from the Govmt. but 50 yrs. from now the kids will all stop me on the st. and make me tell them what hotel we stayed at in Berlin and when Cicotte and Faber and Russell begins to talk about what they done to the Giants everybody will have themself paged and walk out.
Well Al a lot of things come off since the last time I wrote to you. We left Chi Wed. ”

“ Because if you was laying on your stomach faceing them and they hit you at all they couldn't hit you nowheres only in the head and kill you where if you was standing up straight they would be more libel to hit you anywheres except in the head and maybe you would get off with a flesh wound or something. ”

“ They would have to hire a crossing policeman to tell them where to go to get to their position and if they was pitchers they wouldn't know if they was right hand pitchers or left hand pitchers till they begun to pitch and then they would know because if they were hog wild they would be left handers. ”