Jack Keefe Stories

north side and they left little Al in charge of the nurse at the friends and they both stayed there all night and why didn’t I tell her I would be home so as she could have changed her plans and etc. So I said “Yes you are a fine wife and mother running around town with a bunch of bums and leave your kid all alone in charge of a nurse that you don’t know nothing about her and for all as you know she might of cut his ears off like a Belgium.” Well I was sore and I give her a good balling out and of course it wound up like usual with her busting out crying and then they wasn’t nothing for me to do only say I didn’t mean what I had been saying and we had dinner and maybe everything would of been OK only we hadn’t no sooner gotten up from the table when in come ½ of the south side and their wifes to call. Well they wasn’t none of them I ever seen before or ever want to see them again and they was all friends of Florrie’s and 2 of the ladys was customers of hers so she didn’t dare tell them to get the h‑ll out of there and a Mrs. Crane and a Mrs. Somebody else picked on me and got me in a pocket on the Davenport and they didn’t even have sence enough to call me Corporal but it was Mr. Keefe this and Mr. Keefe that and when did I think the war would end and wasn’t the Germans awful and how many men did we have in France and when was I going and so on. And Mrs. Crane said her and all her friends was so jealous of Mrs. Keefe because her husband was a soldier so I said I had heard they was room in some of the camps for a few more husbands and Mrs. Crane said her husband had tried his hardest to get into something but he had bad teeth so I said why didn’t he try and get into some good dentist office. But they wasn’t no way I could get them mad enough to go home till 5 o’clock then I and Florrie and the kid had just a hour together before I had to beat it for the train.

Well Al I won’t get no more leave off till Xmas and maybe not then but what is the use any way when your wife gives you a welcome like that and all together it was a fine trip and I won’t never try and take nobody by surprise after this but at that why couldn’t she of stayed home where a woman belongs.

My train was jamed comeing back tonight and I don’t know where they got it but everybody was oiled up and celebrating about beating Camp Custer in the football game and I’ll say Camp Custer must be a home for cripples or something if that’s the kind of a football club they turn out any way I bet they ain’t no room to dance in the guard house tonight.

Your pal,
Jack.

Camp Grant, Dec. 4.

Friend Al: I guess I was so full of my swell visit home when I wrote you the last time that I forgot about telling you about that little girlie down in Texas. Well Al they isn’t much to tell only that I got another letter from her though I as good as told her I wished she wouldn’t write me no more but she wrote any way and she says she can’t forget me and theys no use asking her to and she wouldn’t tell me where it was we seen each other and they was no use me asking her. It looks from her letter like she was getting in deeper every day and I don’t know what will be the end of it all and if she done anything to herself on my acct. I would feel like a murder though of course a man can’t help how they look or what a girl thinks about them but still and all you can’t help from feeling like you was to blame.

I guess the best way to do is just not answer her letter and hope for the best and hope she won’t do nothing rash.

Well Al I started out to write you a long letter but I am to wore out and I guess anybody would be after what we went through today. It was the coldest day I ever seen so they picked it out for us to go on a 19 mile hike and if you could see the roads around here you would know what that means and they can talk all they want to about how the men suffers in France but I would rather go out in the middle of Nobody’s Land and start a mumblety peg game then take another of these dam hikes with the weather a million below zero and the road full of rutts as big as the grand canion.

If it hadn’t been for setting a example to my command I believe I would of pretended like I was sick and when you are sick they make somebody else carry your junk and leave you ride in a wagon thats OK for a private that don’t care what the rest of them think of him but a corporal has got to keep going and try to keep his men going and when you got a bunch of sap heads like mine it keeps a man on the jump to tend to them. Red Sampson was so bad that I had to keep after him all the while and finely I pulled a good one on him I said “Sampson everybody in the whole regt. is out of step but you.” So the