Well old pal they"s to many sights to see so I will quit for this time.

Your pal, JACK.

_Somewheres in France, Jan. 26._

FRIEND AL: Well old pal here we are and its against the rules to tell you where we are at but of course it don"t take no Shylock to find out because all you would have to do is look at the post mark that they will put on this letter.

Any way you couldn"t p.r.o.nounce what the town"s name is if you seen it spelled out because it isn"t nothing like how its spelled out and you won"t catch me trying to p.r.o.nounce none of these names or talk French because I am off of languages for a while and good old American is good enough for me eh Al?

Well Al now that its all over I guess we was pretty lucky to get across the old pond without no trouble because between you and I Al I heard just a little while ago from one of the boys that three nights ago we was attacked and our ship just missed getting hit by a periscope and the destroyers went after the subs and they was a whole flock of them and the reason we didn"t hear nothing is that the death bombs don"t go off till they are way under water so you can"t hear them but between you and I Al the navy men say they was nine subs sank.

Well I didn"t say nothing about it to the man who tipped me off but I had a hunch that night that something was going on and I don"t remember now if it was something I heard or what it was but I knew they was something in the air and I was expecting every minute that the signal would come for us to take to the boats but they wasn"t no necessity of that because the destroyers worked so fast and besides they say they don"t never give no alarm till the last minute because they don"t want to get everybody up at night for nothing.

Well any way its all over now and here we are and you ought to of heard the people in the town here cheer us when we come in and you ought to see how the girls look at us and believe me Al they are some girls. Its a good thing I am an old married man or I believe I would pretty near be tempted to flirt back with some of the ones that"s been trying to get my eye but the way it is I just give them a smile and pa.s.s on and they"s no harm in that and I figure a man always ought to give other people as much pleasure as you can as long as it don"t harm n.o.body.

Well Al everybody"s busier then a chicken with their head off and I haven"t got no more time to write. But when we get to where we are going I will have time maybe and tell you how we are getting along and if you want drop me a line and I wish you would send me the Chi papers once in a while especially when the baseball training trips starts but maybe they won"t be no Jack Keefe to send them to by that time but if they do get me I will die fighting. You know me Al.

Your pal, JACK.

CHAPTER II

PRIVATE VALENTINE

_Somewheres in France, Feb. 2._

FRIEND AL: Well Al here I am only I can"t tell you where its at because the censor rubs it out when you put down the name of a town and besides that even if I was to write out where we are at you wouldn"t have no idear where its at because how you spell them hasn"t nothing to do with their name if you tried to say it.

For inst. they"s a town a little ways from us that when you say it its Lucy like a gal or something but when you come to spell it out its Loucey like something else.

Well Al any way this is where they have got us staying till we get called up to the front and I can"t hardly wait till that comes off and some say it may be tomorrow and others say we are libel to be here a yr. Well I hope they are wrong because I would rather live in the trenches then one of these billets where they got us and between you and I Al its nothing more then a barn. Just think of a man like I Al thats been use to nothing only the best hotels in the big league and now they got me staying in a barn like I was a horse or something and I use to think I was cold when they had us sleeping with imaginery blankets out to Camp Grant but I would prespire if I was there now after this and when we get through here they can send us up to the north pole in our undershirt and we would half to keep moping the sweat off of our forehead and set under a electric fan to keep from sweltering.

Well they have got us pegged as horses all right not only because they give us a barn to live in but also from the way they sent us here from where we landed at in France and we made the trip in cattle cars and 1 of the boys says they must of got us mixed up with the calvary or something. It certainly was some experience to be rideing on one of these French trains for a man that went back and fourth to the different towns in the big league and back in a special Pullman and sometimes 2 of them so as we could all have lower births. Well we didn"t have no births on the French R. R.

and it wouldn"t of done us no good to of had them because you wouldn"t no sooner dose off when the engine would let off a screem that sounded like a woman that seen a snake and 1 of the boys says that on acct. of all the men being in the army they had women doing the men"s work and judgeing by the noise they even had them whistleing for the crossings.

Well we finely got here any way and they signed us to our different billets and they"s 20 of us in this one not counting a couple of pigs and G.o.d knows how many rats and a cow that mews all night. We haven"t done nothing yet only look around but Monday we go to work out to the training grounds and they say we won"t only half to march 12 miles through the mud and snow to get there. Mean time we set and look out the cracks onto Main St. and every little wile they"s a Co. of pollutes marchs through or a train of motor Lauras takeing stuff up to the front or bringing guys back that didn"t duck quick enough and to see these Frenchmens march you would think it was fun but when they have been at it a wile they will loose some of their pep.

Well its warmer in bed then setting here writeing so I will close for this time.

Your pal, JACK.

_Somewheres in France, Feb. 4._

FRIEND AL: Well Al I am writeing this in the Y. M. C. A. hut where they try and keep it warm and all the boys that can crowd in spends most of their spare time here but we don"t have much spare time at that because its always one thing another and I guess its just as well they keep us busy because every time they find out you are not doing nothing they begin vaxinating everybody.

They"s enough noise in here so as a man can"t hear yourself think let alone writeing a letter so if I make mistakes in spelling and etc. in this letter you will know why it is. They are singing the song now about the baby"s prayer at twilight where the little girl is supposed to be praying for her daddy that"s a soldier to take care of himself but if she was here now she would be praying for him to shut up his noise.

Well we was in the trenchs all day not the regular ones but the ones they got for us to train in them and they was a bunch of French officers trying to learn us how to do this in that and etc. and some of the time you could all most understand what they was trying to tell you and then it was stuff we learnt the first wk. out to Camp Grant and I suppose when they get so as they can speak a few words of English they will tell us we ought to stand up when we hear the Star spangle Banner. Well we was a pretty sight when we got back with the mud and slush and everything and by the time they get ready to call us into action they will half to page us in the morgue.

About every 2 or 3 miles today we would pa.s.s through a town where some of the rest of the boys has got their billets only they don"t call it miles in France because that"s to easy to say but instead of miles they call them kilometts. But any way from the number of jerk water burgs we went through you would think we was on the Monon and the towns all looks so much like the other that when one of the French soldiers gets a few days leave off they half to spend most of it looking for land marks so as they will know if they are where they live. And they couldn"t even be sure if it was warm weather and their folks was standing out in front of the house because all the familys is just alike with the old Mr. and the Mrs. and pigs and a cow and a dog.

Well Al they say its pretty quite these days up to the front and the boys that"s been around here a wile says you can hear the guns when they"s something doing and the wind blows this way but we haven"t heard no guns yet only our own out to where we have riffle practice but everybody says as soon as spring comes and the weather warms up the Germans is sure to start something. Well I don"t care if they start anything or not just so the weather warms up and besides they won"t never finish what they start unless they start going back home and they won"t even finish that unless they show a whole lot more speed then they did comeing. They are just trying to throw a scare into somebody with a lot of junk about a big drive they are going to make but I have seen birds come up to hit in baseball Al that was going to drive it out of the park but their drive turned out to be a hump back liner to the pitcher. I remember once when Speaker come up with a couple men on and we was 2 runs ahead in the 9th. inning and he says to me "Well busher here is where I hit one a mile." Well Al he hit one a mile all right but it was 1/2 a mile up and the other 1/2 a mile down and that"s the way it goes with them gabby guys and its the same way with the Germans and they talk all the time so as they will get thirsty and that"s how they like to be.

Speaking about thirsty Al its different over here then at home because when a man in uniform wants a drink over here you don"t half to hire no room in a hotel and put on your nightgown but you can get it here in your uniform only what they call beer here we would pore it on our wheat cakes at home and they got 2 kinds of wine red and white that you could climb outside of a bbl. of it without asking the head waiter to have them play the Rosery.

But they say the champagne is O. K. and I am going to tackle it when I get a chance and you may think from that that I have got jack to throw away but over here Al is where they make the champagne and you can get a qt. of it for about a buck or 1/2 what you would pay for it in the U. S. and besides that the money they got here is a frank instead of a dollar and a frank isn"t only worth about $.19 cents so a man can have a whole lot better time here and not cost him near as much.

And another place where the people in France has got it on the Americans and that is that when they write a letter here they don"t half to pay nothing to mail it but when you write to me you have got to stick a 5 cent stamp on it but judgeing by the way you answer my letters the war will be all over before you half to break a dime. Of course I am just jokeing Al and I know why you don"t write much because you haven"t got nothing to write staying there in Bedford and you could take a post card and tell me all the news that happened in 10 yrs. and still have room enough yet to say Bertha sends kind regards.

But of course its different with a man like I because I am always where they is something big going on and first it was baseball and now its a bigger game yet you might say but whatever is going on big you can always count on me being in the mist of it and not buried alive in no Indiana X roads where they still think the first bounce is out. But of course I know it is not your fault that you haven"t been around and seen more and it ain"t every man that can get away from a small town and make a name for themself and I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky.

Well Al enough for this time and I will write soon again and I would like to hear from you even if you haven"t nothing to say and don"t forget to send me a Chi paper when you get a hold of one and I asked Florrie to send me one every day but asking her for favors is like rolling off a duck"s back you might say and its first in one ear and then the other.

Your pal, JACK.

_Somewheres in France, Feb. 7._

FRIEND AL: I suppose you have read articles in the papers about the war that"s wrote over here by reporters and the way they do it is they find out something and then write it up and send it by cablegrams to their papers and then they print it and that"s what you read in the papers.

Well Al they"s a whole flock of these here reporters over here and I guess they"s one for every big paper in the U. S. and they all wear bands around their sleeves with a C on them for civilian or something so as you can spot them comeing and keep your mouth shut. Well they have got their head quarters in one of the towns along the line but they ride all over the camp in automobiles and this evening I was outside of our billet and one of them come along and seen me and got out of his car and come up to me and asked if I wasn"t Jack Keefe the White Sox pitcher. Well Al he writes for one of the Chi papers and of course he knows all about me and has seen me work.

Well he asked me a lot of questions about this in that and I didn"t give him no military secrets but he asked me how did I like the army game and etc.

I asked him if he was going to mention about me being here in the paper and he says the censors wouldn"t stand for mentioning no names until you get killed because if they mentioned your name the Germans would know who all was here but after you are dead the Germans don"t care if you had been here or not.

But he says he would put it in the paper that he was talking to a man that use to be a star pitcher on the White Sox and he says everybody would know who it was he was talking about because they wasn"t such a slue of star pitchers in the army that it would take a civil service detective to find out who he meant.

So we talked along and finely he asked me was I going to write a book about the war and I said no and he says all right he would tell the paper that he had ran across a soldier that not only use to be a ball player but wasn"t going to write a book and they would make a big story out of it.

So I said I wouldn"t know how to go about it to write a book but when I went around the world with the 2 ball clubs that time I use to write some poultry once in a wile just for different occasions like where the boys was called on for a speech or something and they didn"t know what to say so I would make up one of my poems and the people would go nuts over them.

So he said why didn"t I tear off a few patriotic poems now and slip them to him and he would send them to his paper and they would print them and maybe if some of them was good enough somebody would set down and write a song to them and probably everybody would want to buy it and sing it like Over There and I would clean up a good peace of jack.

Well Al I told him I would see if I could think up something to write and of course I was just stalling him because a soldier has got something better to do than write songs and I will leave that to the birds that was gun shy and stayed home. But if you see in the Chi papers where one of the reporters was talking to a soldier that use to be a star pitcher in the American League or something you will know who they mean. He said he would drop by in a few days again and see if I had something wrote up for him but I will half to tell him I have been to busy to monkey with it.

As far as I can see they"s enough songs all ready wrote up about the war so as everybody in the army and navy could have 1 a peace and still have a few left over for the boshs and that"s a name we got up for the Germans Al and instead of calling them Germans we call them boshs on acct. of them being so full of bunk.

Well Al one of the burgs along the line is where Jonah Vark was born when she was alive. It seems like France was mixed up in another war along about a 100 yrs. ago and they was getting licked and Jonah was just a young gal but she dressed up in men"s coat and pants and went up to the front and led the charges with a horse and she carried a white flag and the Dutchmens or whoever they was fighting against must of thought it was a flag of truants and any way they didn"t fire at them and the French captured New Orleans and win the war. The Germans is trying to pull the same stuff on our boys now and lots of times they run up and holler Conrad like they was going to give up and when your back is turned they whang away at you but they won"t pull none of that stuff on me and when one of them trys to Conrad me I will perculate them with a bayonet.

Well Al the boys is starting their choir practice and its good night and some times I wished I was a deef and dumb mute and couldn"t hear nothing.