back out for father
and cousin Walt have put it up to me to see the thing through and though
I'm kind of used to disapointing father I don't intend that Walt shall
think I'm sandless.

But when the camp breaks up you must be sure to be here, with the
Rolls-Royce, to take me home. I don't think I could stand another trip
like this. Love from,

DAVID.

PRIVATE RICHARD GODWIN TO HIS MOTHER

Plattsburg Camp.
Friday evening, Sept. 8.

DEAR MOTHER:--

I had scarcely finished my letter of this morning when the train began to
slow down, and then drew up alongside a wide and gently sloping field,
while on the other side was the lake. With our luggage we poured out into
the field, evidently our training ground, since beyond it were tented
streets, with some big open-sided buildings that doubtless had some
military use, since we saw rookies going in and out. In haste to get our
share of what was to be had, we consulted the printed slips handed to us
in the train.

"On arriving at camp: First, Carry your hand baggage to the Y. M. C. A."

Where was the Y. M. C. A.? There was no building standing near of even
so much as two stories. There were tents and there were shacks, but even
when we came to a street busy with electrics, automobiles, motor trucks,
and foot passers, nothing of any size was to be seen. But as I followed
along with the rest, noting that almost everybody we met, from the riders
in the autos to the drivers of the trucks, was military, I saw a skeleton
structure, tar-paper-roofed, and bearing the magic letters for which we
were looking. There regulars--artillerymen with red-corded hats--received
our bags through the open frontage and stored them alphabetically.

"Second. Go to the mess-shacks for breakfast."

We went. We breakfasted. The mess shacks were those other open-sided
buildings on the drill-field which I had already seen; their
construction, being merely tarred roofs on posts and walled with mosquito
netting, promised no elegance of fare. Nor was the fare elegant: milk,
coffee, cereal, hard boiled eggs, bread, butter, a bruised apple. The
milk was of two kinds, real and canned. Used in the coffee, or with sugar
on the cereal, the canned milk was good enough as poured from a hole
punched in the container; but a wise man near me pro