Dere Julie:
At last we are in the land made famous by Joan of Ark, and notorious
by N. Bonaparty. The little burg we are billeted in is about as big as
a pound of choclates after a Yale-Harvard football game. It's so small
you can stand on the corner of Rue de Main and spit into the country.
It looks like the ornament on a birthday cake or a picture post office
card.
We have been hear about 1 week, and would have written sooner but for
the second time in the life of yours truly, I am recovering from "Mal
dee Mear" (the name is bad enuff, but the disease is worse) Third
Class passengers call it sea-sickness, but if you have a first class
cabin, you are supposed to call it mal dee mear.
They say its only about 30 miles from Dover to Callay; maybe it is on
a calm day, but believe you me derie, we went up the hills of water to
the tune of about a hundred miles. It was all-rite goin up, but Julie
goin down is when everything "comes up." That's if you have anything
left to come up.
[Illustration: "I don't know what to call you," sez he, "Call me an
ambulance," says I.--]
The game we played comin over would have been a good trainin fer a
prize fiter. We tumbled round so we looked like we was shadow boxin.
"Snappy brand of weather" pipes one of these sailor guys. He was rite,
I never remember givin a better imitation of a whip snapper; and the
wind, Julie dere, the wind which spends its time round the Flatiron
and Woolworth Buildings, are as the poets say "gentle zephers" to that
which sweeps across the English channel when a man sized storm is on;
it listens like a cross between the moan of a dyin giastacutus and a
subway express behind time under the East River.
I never before was so glad to set my foot on dri land. I was so
tickled I could have kisst the ground if it had been Hoboken, N.
J.U.S.A. Next time they send me to Vive la France, I hope they send me
by parcels post or airoplane. I bumped into the Captain; he said, "I
dunno what to call you," I told him he could call me an ambulance or
a taxi, anything to get to land with. We have been on water so much
since we swore our way into the army, that I don't know whether I'm in
the army or navy. Tomorrow me and Skinny is gonna get a pass to look
over Paree. We're lookin forward to a big time with what Skinny calls
"Ze gay chansonettes." I don't know whether he means a disease or a
dance, as I don't make this parley-voo much, but I'm gonna find out
before we come back.
With love I am yours until my wrist watch goes 24 hrs without takin a
recess,