Letter to Horace
Witley
1-5-17
Dear Horace:–
We are out on Thursley commons to day some kind of manouvers and I brot out a load of picks and shovels so I have a good time riding the night horse and rolling around in the sand between moves, I am now sitting in the shade of a big pine tree about 40 feet high with my hat and tunic off, that will best describe how nice and warm it is this is the 11th day straight of the most ideal weather you ever saw, and it is such a change to the cold spring weather we had be fore it.
Now days like this we have a real picnic we are only a bout two miles or a little more from camp so it is great.
Before I ate dinner I road up to a small clear creek about ¾ of a mile a lot of the boys did not take there teams up that is the way they use the poor horses it is hard to be a horse in the army but it is better to be a horse than a mule for mules fight so much that they are in trubble all the time,
Rev. Mead is at this S.C.A. hut now he is a man that I like awfully well at Bramshot and he and I are just having great times here,
There is thousands upon thousand of troups thru the woods, we bring out field kitchens and have just the same meal out here that we would have in camp, its a real treat if we never thot where we may end in a short period of time
I read a letter from one of our boys in a hospital last night he has had one leg shot up so it will always be useless and it will be about 4 months yet before he can get out of bed so he is blue, I never saw him in my life but know well his friend here so I wrote him a letter to just because he was one of our boys, He that boys I lay in the snow with the machine gun fire hitting the ground all around me I thot it was my last day on earth, he wishes they had amputated his leg he feels that it would be quicker and less pain full to loose it that to save it useless as it will be
bye bye old boy as every your loving brother
Laurie
I have quit all girl corespondence entirely the next girl I write I will mean to marry. L.