none now thats worth a dam. So you see that you don't miss no more
trains because the next time it will go a whole lot different. You are
excused only that you won't get no more leave for a month."

So I said thank you sir and told him I was sorry because I was in a
hurry to get to France and didn't want nothing to come up to interfere
with me going and he says "You don't want to go no more then I do but it
looks like we would all be here till we die of old age." So I asked him
if the corporals wasn't going ahead of the rest of the bunch and he says
the corporals would go with the privates unless they was all shot by
that time for being A.W.O.L.

So here I am Al and I have told the boys I was not going to quit them
and I never seen nobody so tickled. Well Al I am glad to in a way and on
the other hand its a big dissapointment but a man has got to learn to
swallow their dissapointments in the army and take what comes.

Your pal, JACK.




CAMP GRANT, Nov. 4.

_FRIEND AL:_ Well Al they have begin to bust up our regt. and take men
away from it and the men they take will get to France before the rest of
us the lucky stiffs but they don't send them right to France from here
but they send them down south to the national guards camps and fill up
the national guards with them and the national guards are going to get
across the pond first because Secty. Daniels wants to save the good