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Monday, Sept. 11, 1916.

Dear Mother:—

I began my day with my usual bucket from the tap; there are always early birds to serve me, and my helper this morning said it made him feel virtuous just to souse me. I prefer this to the shower baths, which are much further away. A very few go early to the lake and make parade of it; said one to his corporal yesterday, finding him crawling from his bed into his clothes, “My God, man, don’t you ever bathe?” But the poor corporal was still shaking with his typhoid.

Clay, who was up early on mysterious errands in the dusk, has just brought in boards to lay in front of his cot. Reardon asked, “What are you going to do on the hike? You’ll have to put your feet on the ground.” But Clay evidently likes a bit of luxury, and when he gave me his surplus boards I found I liked it too, for I prefer keeping my feet out of this sand, which has a creeping quality and gets everywhere. Out in front of the tent there had appeared a bench. “Hi!” cried Bannister, “where did that come from?” Clay said nothing, and Bannister, who appreciated the new convenience, thought it best to ask no more. I, with a mind on further conveniences, suggested that we club together for a bucket for our washing. Clay offered to get this without cost, but late in the afternoon reported failure. “I couldn’t get one, though I looked in every tent in the other companies.” Then he missed our new bench. “Where has it gone?” he demanded. Corder answered dryly, “Back to its original owners, I suppose.” But the lantern works better tonight, as the fellows all remark, avoiding mention of the fact that it has a somewhat different shape.

This morning we had our first drill in calisthenics. We were spaced in very open order, advised to take off our shirts, and Captain Wheeler, a magnificent figure of a man, strong as an oak in spite of his gray hair, stood on a platform and put us through exercises that searched out, so the boys agreed, muscles that you didn’t know you had. You get a new idea of the “position of a soldier” after he has shown it to you. “Oh, no, no, no!” he cried when first we came to attention at his command, his voice rolling away over the lake into infinite distance. And then he made us try to show that we were proud of our uniforms.

This afternoon’s platoon drill, under our lieutenant, made me very sure that, though I already feel as if I had been here for weeks, I am not yet master of my work. The drill kept me thinking. As it is no pleasure to be publicly called down, I am all the while trying to make no mistakes. A fellow must instantly—instantly!—know the difference between “Platoon right,” for instance, and “Right by squads,” even though the commands may not have been given for an hour. And one must know it whether corporal or not, for half the time the corporals do not yet know it themselves, and either mumble their commands or are silent, so that they are no help. And even if a fellow knows what to do, but lags in the doing of it, then he is likely to put the whole line out. Further, freight trains rumble by at the bottom of the drill field, the wind whistles in your ears, other officers near at hand are shouting commands to other platoons, and so you are likely not to hear a command at all. But on the whole I think I am improving.

The short time that we had with the captain was enough to prove that he is, as Clay claimed, a Southerner, if only from his use of the word like. As we came down from the right shoulder, he said, “Don’t climb your rifle lahk it was a rope.” And at Present Arms, “That man is holding up his piece lahk it was a Christmas tree.” “Swing your arms,” said he, “lahk you were proud of yo’selves!” Other little localisms slip in. When a man had explained a question that the captain at first did not understand, he said when he grasped it, “Oh, Ah see; Ah didn’t locate yo’.” But it is a pity to misspell so broadly. The differences of accent, though evident, are slight and pleasing, even musical.

Love from,

Dick.