Well of course he didn’t start nothing but just said he would get back at me if it took him till the duration of the war and I told some of the other boys about putting it over on him and they couldn’t hardly help from smileing but he acts like a baby and don’t speak to me and I suppose maybe he thinks that makes me feel bad but I got to be 25 yrs. old before I ever seen him and if his head was blowed off tomorrow a.m. I would try and show up for my 3 meals a day if you could call them that.
But speaking about April Fool Al I just stopped writeing to try and light a cigarette with 1 of these here French matchs and every one of them is a April Fool and I guess the parents of the kids over here don’t never half to worry about them smokeing to young because even if they had a box of cigarettes hid in their cradle they would be of age before they would run across a match that lit and I wouldn’t be scared to give little Al a bunch and turn him loose in a bbl. of gasoline.
Well Al I suppose you been reading in the papers about the Dutchmens starting a drive vs. the English up in the northren part of the section and at first it looked like the English was going to leave them walk into the Gulf Stream and scald themself to death, but now it seems like we have got them slowed up at lease that’s the dope we get here but for all the news we get a hold of we might as well of jumped to the codfish league on the way over and once in a wile some of the boys gets a U.S. paper a mo. old but they hog onto it and don’t leave nobody else see it but as far as I am conserned they can keep it because I haven’t no time to waist reading about the Frisco fair or the Federal League has blowed up and etc. And of course they’s plenty of newspapers from Paris but all printed in la la la so as every time you come to a word you half to rumage through a dictionary and even when you run it down its libel to mean 20 different articles and by the time you figured out whether they are talking about a st. car or a hot bath or a raisin or what and the he‑ll they are talking about they wouldn’t be no more news to it then the bible and it looks to me Al like it would be a good idear if you was to drop me a post card when the war is over so as I can tell Capt. Seeley or he will still be running us ragged to get in shape a couple of yrs. after the last of the Dutchmens lays molting in the grave.
Jokeing to 1 side Al you probably know what’s going on a long wile before we do and the only chance we would have to know how a battle come out would be if we was in it and they’s no chance of that unless they send us up to the northern part of the section to help out because Van Hindenburg must have something under his hat besides bristles and he ain’t a sucker enough to start driveing vs. the front that we are behind it unless he is so homesick that he can’t stand it no longer in France.
Somewheres in France, April 6.
Friend Al: Well Al 1 of the Chi newspapers is getting out a paper in Paris and printed in English and I just seen a copy of it where the Allys has finely got wise to themself and made 1 man gen. of all the Allys and it was a sucker play to not do that long ago only it looks to me like they pulled another boner by makeing a Frenchman the gen. and I suppose they done it for a complement to the Frenchmens on acct. of the war being here, but even suppose this here Foch is a smart gen. and use his brains and etc. it looks to me like it would of been a whole lot better to of picked out a man that can speak English because suppose we was all in a big battle or something and he wanted we should go over the top and if he said it in French why most of the boys hasn’t made no attempts to master the language and as far as
