Your pal, Jack.
Camp Grant, Oct. 24.
FRIEND AL: Well Al this was Liberty Day and we had a parade in Rockford and they was also some ball games out here and that is the boys thought they was playing ball and everybody was crazy I should pitch for one of the teams but in the first place I didn't feel like it would be fair and besides I figure its bad dope for the officers to mix up with the men and play games with them and etc. and thats not because I think I am any better then anybody else but if you hold yourself off they respect you that much more and I have noticed that Capt. Nash and the lieuts, don't hang a round with nobody only themselfs and when it comes to the majors and colonels I guess they don't even speak to their own wife only when they are danceing maybe and step on each others ft.
Well Al I decided today to not try and work that little scheme I had about alloting my whole salary to Florrie and then the govt. would put the same amt. with it and I would be salting away $66.00 per mo. instead of $36.00 and I was talking to Corp. Haney about it and he says it couldn't be done and I don't know about that but any way I figured it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the boys so I am going to allot $18.00 per mo. to Florrie to keep for me and that leaves me $18 per mo. to spend that is it leaves me that amt. on paper but when you come to figure it out Al I am paying $5.60 for soldiers insurance and $10.00 per mo. for another liberty bond I bought and that leaves me $2.40 per mo. to spend and how is that for a man that was drawing a salary in the big league but at that I have got it on some of the privates that gives up the same amt. for insurance and a liberty bond and they only gets $30.00 per mo. and 1/2 of that amt. gos to their wife so when it comes to the end of the month they owe $.60 for being a soldier.
Speaking about the soldiers insurance with the kind I got if I was disabled they would have to give me $50.00 to $60.00 per mo. on acct. of me haveing Florrie and little Al and that would come in handy Al if I got my right arm shot off and couldn't pitch but at that I know birds in the big league now thats drawing $400.00 to $500.00 per mo. and as far as their pitchings conserned they might just as well have both their arms shot off and include their head.
Well anyway we won't have to practice fighting no more with broom sticks and cans and etc. because Sargent James told us tonight that the rifles was comeing so I said to my boys that I hoped they was good shots so we could make a sucker out of the other squads and I told them if they was all as good a shot as me I wouldn't have no kick because I figure that anybody thats got as good control when they throw or pitch should certainly ought to shoot straight. So Red Sampson says that if I was in the French army it wouldn't do me no good to be a crack shot and I asked him why not and he says the corporals in the French army are not allowed to carry no guns but all they was supposed to do was run ahead of the privates and draw the fire and maybe if the Germans happened to not hit them they could pull out their scissors and cut the bob wire untanglements so as the privates wouldn't have no trouble getting in to the German trenchs where they could use their bayonets.
Corporal don't carry no arms of any kind and all he is is a kind of decoy to kep the Germans shooting (p. 91).