arly start. The night is clear and cold--but we
are hardened to anything now. Love from

DICK.

PRIVATE GODWIN'S DAILY LETTER

In camp at Ellenburg Center.
Sitting before the tent, on my blankets.
Monday the 2d October, 1916.

DEAR MOTHER:--

The other companies are cheering in the distance, and I suppose I know
why. For our company has been spared a great affliction, which would have
been very cruel after a hard morning's work. We came into camp a long
hour after everybody else, and had just pitched our tents and had dinner
when our captain called us together in a close bunch, and told us that
the regimental commander had been dissatisfied with the deployments of
the other companies, and was having them out to drill; but that our work
had been satisfactory, and that in consideration of our hard service on
recent days, we were to be excused. You see we have worked hard on Friday
(digging and defending trenches) Saturday (when our skirmish work in the
mud and wet was the severest, he said, that a company on the hike has yet
had) and today, when we started first and finished last. So I imagine
that if it was proposed to include us in this afternoon's drill the
captain fought hard to have us excused. I hope it's also true that our
skirmish work is good. We cheered the announcement and enjoyed our
leisure; and now the other companies are expressing their delight at
being released from their two hours' work in a stubble field.

Last night, after I had mailed my letters, I stood about and watched the
camp with its always varied picturesqueness--the many fires, the drifting
smoke lit up by flames, the groups here and there, the undertones of
talk, the singing. The buzzard song has instantly become popular, and the
lieutenant's platoon have a chant of praise to him--I don't know all the
words as yet.

"He's on the job, boys,
To find some nice wet moss to lie on,
For today we march
Thro' (dum ti dum) to Ellenburg,
Dum, dum, ti dum dum (here memory fails)
Prepare to rush,
Thro' mud and slush,
God help the man that tries to shirk!"

Besides these there have come to us from other companies, and indeed fro