I have all ready wrote and told Florrie about it and I bet she will go crazy when she reads my letter and after this when they call her Mrs. Keefe she can shrink up her shoulders and say “Mrs. Corp. Keefe please” and you will have to salute when you see me Al. Of course I mean that for a joke because what ever honors I get I wouldn’t leave them make no difference in our friendship and betwen you and I it will always be just plain Jack Keefe.
Well Al we started today learning to throw bombs and of course that won’t be no trick for me and you might say it was waisting time for me to practice at it because when my arm feels OK I can throw in your vest pocket but today it was raining and I wouldn’t cut loose and take chances with my arm because I figure this war won’t last long and I guess I won’t have no trouble signing up in the big league at my own turns after what I done. But you ought to seen the officer that was trying to learn us how and if they all throw like he its a wonder they hit Europe to say nothing about the Germans. He kept his arm stiff like he didn’t have no elbow joint and he was straight over hand all the while like Reulbach and you know what kind of control he had.
We didn’t have no regular bombs but only stones and tomato cans but the way he throwed he couldn’t of took a baseball and hit the infield from second base and finely I told him and he said yes but if you crooked your arm you would wear it out because the regular bombs weighs almost 2 lbs. and you had to use a easy motion. How is that Al for a fresh bum trying to talk to me about easy motions and I had a notion to tell him to go back to France with his motions but I kept my temper and throwed a few the right way till my arm got to feeling sore.
Well its 10 o’clock and after and I am going to turn in and it isn’t that I feel sleepy but when a man is a officer you feel like you ought to set an example to the men.
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.
We done it over and over till I was pretty near wore out but of course I pretended like I was fresh as a daisy because a good corporal wouldn’t never lay down till he was dead and its their business to set up an example for the boys and inspire them so I kept hollering like Hughey Jennings or somebody and every time we started out of our trenchs I would holler “Come on boys give them hell this time” and I guess it made a hit with the instructers because they kept smileing at me and talking about me between themselfs and I could pretty near guess what they said. But of course it made Shorty Lahey sore to see me getting all the attentions and he says to me “Who do you think you are Jonah Vark?” So I said “You tend to your business and show some life or I will Jonah Vark you in the jaw.”
So afterwards when we was in the barracks he come up and says “If you are playing Jonah Vark you should ought to quit telling us to come on boys and give them hell because Jonah Vark wouldn’t never use a word like that.” So I said “I guess he would say a whole lot worse then that if he had a dirty rat like you in his command.” So that shut him up.
Tonight they showed us some pictures that was supposed to be the West Pt. cadets drilling and Capt. Nash says if we ever got so as we could drill like that he would quit working us so hard. Well Al its all OK to hand that stuff to the boys that don’t know no more then to fall for it but I hope they didn’t suppose I was a sucker enough to think those was real pictures but of course I wouldn’t say nothing because if looking at a lot of fake pictures makes the boys work harder the sooner we will get sent to France.
I was just talking to Red Sampson and he was telling me about a bird named Chambers in Co. A and it shows some people don’t know when they have got a good thing and don’t appreciate what people trys to do for them. I remember this bird comeing out with us on the train and they wouldn’t
