Private Godwin’s Daily Letter

Cherubusco, Saturday the 30th, evening.
In a farmhouse kitchen, where some of my things are
drying, and where I, sitting in a CHAIR, am writing
at a TABLE!

Dear Mother:—

Yesterday I said to Knudsen, while David listened, “The trouble with our platoon is that we don’t particularly care for our sergeants, and have got into the way of knocking them. I’ve done more or less of it myself. Now it may be no more than they deserve, but it’s bad for our discipline and our work. Don’t you suppose we could turn about and help the sergeants more? If you should lead in it, it would make a difference in the whole platoon, for I notice that everyone wants to know your opinion.” David’s face showed that he approved, so Knudsen agreed, and we three talking to our squad and Squad Nine, have started a little Good Government Association. I think today it did good.

Last night was a long one for me. I am still unable to get myself a woollen cap, and though I used the felt hat for both the cold and the rain, it rolled away at every excuse. To keep out the rain, I had laid my poncho on the windward side of the tent, buttoning it along the ridgepole; but it slapped a good deal of the time. The entrance-flaps, which some of the fellows always button, I had open for the air, and they thrashed all night. Beside me Bann slept like a child; but I was pretty damp when I went to bed, the rain and the wind came through, and every little thing waked me. Twice a peg pulled out, but the tent stood, and I was able to put it in again. So the night was long. Yet I got some sleep, and we were surely better off than our opposite neighbors, whose tent blew down soon after midnight, so that they had to crawl out and set it up in the dark and the driving rain.

There are camp tales of all kinds of hardships. Some stayed round the fires all night to keep warm; some, their tents collapsing, took refuge on a nearby piazza; some talk of washing their faces this morning in hoar frost. But I saw none of this.

The yowlings which usually greet the bugler on any unwelcome occasion were absent this morning, for most of us were ready to rise, or already risen. There was at first only a drizzle, in which I ate breakfast; it surely was better than last night, with the steady rain running from my hat into my stew as I bent over it, and cooling as well as diluting it, besides searching out vulnerable parts of my person, which a poncho does not truly protect. Yesterday I set my things down on a wet board; today I stood at the high running-board of an auto-truck, a very desirable position. Yet I thought my hands have seldom been colder than when I stood in line this morning, unable to give them the protection of gloves or pockets.

In the same drizzle we broke camp, packed our squad-bags and blanket-rolls, and made our packs. It rained as we started, and the whole outlook was bad—for to march ten miles in the wet, and then to make camp under these same conditions, was soldiering indeed.