Your son,
Dinsmore.
Not till the last line did I realize that Christmas was so near. Naturally, the war Christmas will be more conservative than ever, but I hope that real festivities will continue. America is far enough from the Front to keep the sound of battle from breaking the rhythm of the dance. I should like to be back there for three or four days of the Christmas vacation, with a fair round of dancing and turkey and calling on old friends. I shall make every effort to spend Christmas at my marraine’s.
My present to mother is a silver frame containing a picture of her son in war array of leathers and furs, helmet and goggles, standing by the propeller of France’s fastest war plane. To father I give my croix de guerre representing the first Boche I brought down, and to Bob goes a penholder shaped like a propeller and made from a splinter of the propeller of my first Boche plane—all imaginary gifts, but true.
Your son,
Dinsmore.
December 1, 1917.
Dear Bob:
Your letter written November 10 came yesterday with a lot of other letters and about five packages. Gee! it was just like Christmas. We all sat about the stove and ate nuts and dates, figs and candy, till our stomachs ached. You can’t appreciate what wonderful and necessary things figs and prunes are till you go without sweet things by the month. Take a prune, for instance. If I could have a candied prune for every mile I walked, I would use up a pair of shoes every week. Myrtle sent me three cans of salted nuts; and a girl in Boston sent me a surprise package.
Well, Bob, I am a real pilot now. I can play “stump the leader” with anybody. Turning loops and somersaults and corkscrew turns are nothing any more. The hardest things to do are the “roundversments,” “barrel roll” and “vertical bank.”