Jack Keefe Stories

the best of it because suppose the other side only had say 50 thousand men in a certain section they’s nothing to prevent a gen. from going after them with a 100 thousand men and if he can’t run them ragged when you got to them 2 to I its time to enlist in the G.A.R. All though as I say a mgr. can’t only use nine men at a time in baseball, but at that I know of incidents where a mgr. has took advantage of the oppts. being shy of men and one time the St. Louis club came to Chi and Jones was all crippled up for pitchers but the game was on our home grounds so it was up to Mgr. Rowland to say if the game should be played or if he should call it off on acct. of cold weather because it was in the spring. But he knowed Jones was shy of pitchers so he made him play the game and Jones used big Laudermilk to pitch against us and they beat us 5 and 2.

4

Another advantage where a gen. got it on a baseball mgr. because in baseball the game begins at 3 o’clock and the other club knows when its going to begin just the same as your club so they can’t neither club beat the other one to it and start the game wile the other club is looking out the window.

But a gen. don’t half to tell the other side when he is going to attack them but of course they have observers that can see when you are going to get ready to pull something. But it looks to me like the observers wouldn’t be worth a hoop and he‑ll if the other gen. made his preparations at night when it was dark like bringing up the troops and artilery and supplys and etc. and in that way you could take them by supprise and make them look like a fool, like in baseball I have often crossed the batter up and one day I had Cobb 3 and 2 and he was all set to murder a fast one and I dinked a slow one up there to him and the lucky stiff hit it on the end of his bat just inside third base and 2 men scored on it.

That’s about the idears I am going to give him Al only of course I can talk it off better then I can write it because wile I am talking I can think up a lot more incidents to tell him and him being a baseball fan he will set there pop eyed with his mouth open as long as I want to talk. But now I can’t hardly wait for him to get here Al and it seems funny to think that here I am a $30 dollar a mo. doughboy and maybe in a few days I will be on the staff and they don’t have nobody only officers and even a lieut. gets 5 or 6 times as much as a doughboy and how is that for a fine nickname Al for men that all the dough they are getting is a $1 per day and the pollutes only gets 2 Sues a day and that’s about 2 cents so I suppose we ought to call them the Wall St. crowd.

Well Al you should ought to be thankfull you are there at home with your wife where you can watch her and keep your eyes on her and find out what she is doing with her spare time though I guess at that they wouldn’t be much danger of old Bertha running a muck and I don’t suppose she would half to wear bob wire entanglements to keep Jack the Kisser away but when a man has got a wife like Florrie and here I am over here and there she is over there well Al a man don’t get to sleep no quicker nights from thinking about it and I lay there night after night and wonder what and the he‑ll can she be doing and she might be doing most anything Al and they’s only the one thing that its a cinch she ain’t doing and that’s writeing a letter to me and a man would pretty near think she had forgot my first name but even at that she could set down and write to me and start it out Dear Husband.

But the way she acts why even if they was any fun over here I wouldn’t be haveing it and suppose I do get on Gen. Pershing’s staff and get a lieut. or something and write and tell her about it, why she would probably wait till a legal holiday to answer me back and then she would write about 10 words and say she went to the Palace last week and when she come out after the show it was raining.

Well Al you can’t blame a man for anything he pulls off when their wife acts like that and if I give that little Ernestine a smack the next time she bulges her lips out at me whose fault is it Al? Not mine.

Your pal,
Jack.

Somewheres in France, March 20.

Friend Al: Well Al the sooner the Germans starts their drive let them come and I only hope we are up there when they start it and believe me Al if they come at us with the gas I will dive into it with my mouth wide open and see how much of it I can get because they’s no use Al of a man trying to live with the kind of luck I have got and I’m sick in tired of it all.

Wait till you hear what come off today Al. In the first place my feet’s been going back on me for a long