So then he asked was I going to answer the letter and I said of course I was and he says well I better take a whole lot of pains with my answer and study up the situation before I wrote it and put some good idears in it and if my letters made a hit with Gen. Pershing the next thing you know he would probably summons me to Paris and maybe stick me on the war board so as all I would half to do would be figure up plans of attacks and etc. and not half to go up in the trenchs and wrist my life and probably get splattered all over France.
So I said "Well I am not looking for no excuse to get out of the trenchs but its just the other way and I am nuts to get in them." So he says "You must be." But he showed me where it would be a great experience to set in at them meetings even if I didn't have much to say and just set there and listen and hear their plans and what's comeing off and besides I would get a chance to see something of Paris and it don't look like none of us only the officers would be give leave to go there but of course I would go if Black Jack wanted me and after all Al I am here to give Uncle Sam the best I have got and if I can serve the stars and strips better by sticking pins in a map then getting in the trenchs why all right and it takes more than common soldiers to win a war and if I am more use to them as a kind of adviser instead of carrying a bayonet why I will sacrifice my own feelings for the good of the cause like I often done in baseball.
But they's another thing Alcock told me Al and that is that the war board they have got has got gens. on it from all the different countrys like the U. S. and England and France and Spain and of course they are more French gens. than anything else on acct. of the war being here in France so probably they do some of their talking in French and Alcock says if he was I he would get busy and try and learn enough French so as I could make myself understood when I had something to say and of course they probably won't nothing come out of it all but still and all I always says its best to be ready for whatever comes off and if the U. S. had of been ready for this war I wouldn't be setting here writeing this letter now but I would be takeing a plunge in one of them Berlin brewry vats.
Any way I have all ready picked enough French so as I can talk it pretty good and I would be O. K. if I could understand it when they are talking it off but to hear them talk it off you would think they seen their dinner at the end of the sentence.
Well Al I will tell you how things comes out and I hope Black Jack will forget all about it and lay off me so as I can get into the real fighting instead of standing in front of a map all the wile like a school teacher or something and I all most wished I hadn't never wrote that article and then of course the idear wouldn't of never came to Black Jack that I could help him but if he does take me on his staff it will be some pair of Jacks eh Al and enough to open the pot and if the Germans is sucker enough to stay in they will get their whiskers cinched.
Your pal, JACK.
Somewheres in France, March 14.
FRIEND AL: Well this is the second letter I have wrote today and the other one is to Gen. Pershing and I have still got the letter here yet Al and I will coppy it down and tell you what I wrote to him.
GEN. JACK PERSHING,