ATE SAMUEL PICKLE TO HIS BROTHER

Plattsburg Training Camp.
Sunday, Sept. 10, 1916.

Say, Tony, what a mutt I was not to get myself jabbed for typhoid before
I came here! It would have been worth the money. Today my arm feels like
a hornet's nest, with roots up into my shoulder and down my ribs. And my
head is light and wavy--that's fever. I saw one guy keel over stiff when
the doctor stuck him, and the poor corp of our squad says he'd swap jobs
with his rear-rank man if he could only feel like a boy again.

They feed you here with food that's like ourselves, coarse and plentiful.
I'll never again call sister's doughnuts sinkers; wish I could see any
kind of a doughnut. The table china is delicate French--nit. The waiters
are in livery. The man with a long reach will grow fat while others
starve. Take care not to spill anything; it may fall into your hat that
hangs under the table. Iced tea should be iced and should be tea; milk
should be milk. When you see a thing that you want, ask for it; the
platter will get to you even if the food don't. Elbows on the table are
comfort but bad form, same as at home. The men that stay longest at table
take pains to tell you that they eat slow. Eat first whatever is handiest
when you sit down; why be idle while your soup is coming?

It's considered impolite to drink at the company spigot, but there's no
rule against cleaning your teeth there. The best way to rinse your
stocking after soaping is to hold it over the nozzle like a bag, and
squeeze it while the water runs through. It takes so long to get hot
water here that you'd better learn to shave with cold. I never before
made my toilet out on the sidewalk, but a fellow can get used to
anything.

You may talk of being chambermaid to a cow, but it's worse being groom to
a gun. These rifles have been in use all summer, and they're all et up
inside. They're like fat men, they sweat. Then they rust. Put in some
dope and swab the barrel, then take twenty-five dinky little squares of
cotton flannel and run them through, and the last will be just as dirty
as the first. Let it go at that, and put in some oil, and say Damn.

It takes three lacings below the knee to get yourself dressed, and three
unlacings to get to bed, unless you want to be a real soldier boy, and
sleep in your clothes. And only two hooks in all these lacings--the rest
eyelets, e