April 31st. Have just come off guard duty and feel quite exhausted. The guns are altogether too heavy. I can think of about five different things I could remove from them without greatly decreasing their utility. The first would be the barrel. The artist who drew the picture in the last camp paper of Dawn appearing in the form of a beautiful woman must have had more luck than I have ever had. I think he would have been closer to the truth if he had put her in a speeding automobile on its way home from a road house. It surely is a proof of discipline to hear the mocking, silver-toned laughter of women ring out in the night only ten feet away and not drop your gun and follow it right through the barbed wire. After the war, I am going to buy lots of barbed wire and cut it up into little bits just to relieve my feelings.
Last night I had the fright of my life. Some one was fooling around the fence in the darkness.
"Who's there?" I cried.
"Why, I'm Kaiser William," came the answer in a subdued voice.
"Well, I wish you'd go away, Kaiser William," said I nervously, "you're busting the lights out of rule number six."
"What's that?" asks the voice.
"Not to commit a nuisance with any one except in a military manner," I replied, becoming slightly involved.
"That's not such a wonderful rule," came back the voice in complaining tones. "I could make up a rule better than that."
"Don't try to to-night," I pleaded.