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ride from Mt. Notre Dame to the Fismes road. This was once when I wished that I knew more French. Carried empties back to Bazoches. Back to camp at 4 P.M. Beautiful moonlight night. Expect to hear some Boche planes over before morning.
Saturday Sept. 29 '17
Yes planes came over but were driven off very soon. Yesterday I matched Cutie to see who would go on convoi [convoy] and I lost, so he went on convoi [convoy] today. -- This afternoon the U.S. recuting [recruiting] captain got all the fellows of all the sections together in the Y.M.C.A. tent and gave us a talk. I wasn't for his little speech at all.
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Some of the boys thought it a fine talk, but changed their minds soon after getting back to camp. -- Krusi, and Holmes signed up in the transportation, or quartermasters service. Paul gave us a talk after dinner and no more than the original sixteen men signified their intention in signing up. The rest of us are going to take our chances in getting out when our time is up with the French Army or before if possible.
Sunday Sept. 30 '17
After cleaning our car up on the hill where the section was moved to last night I got orders to go with Burt Hope
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on no. 10 to Soissons after gasolene [gasoline]. We had a wonderful time. The Frenchman that went with us didn't know the road and tried to tell us the road that we have traveled over two or three times a week for the past three months. We had lots of fun fooling him about the road and also in passing teams. He thought we would get recked [wrecked] sure. He didn't know where the park was in Soissons so we wandered all over the city in our carmion looking for it and fooling him all the time. After we got loaded we found that we were to be part of a French convoi [convoy] of fourteen cars. The fun really
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began when we started home. We were the last car and had our French friend with, who proved to be a good sport, and with plenty of money. He was a whole sale liqure [liquor] dealer before the war, and had charge of France's liqure [liquor] exhibit at the P.P.I.E. (Panama-Pacific International Exposition) We stoped [stopped] no less than fourty times from Soisons [Soissons] to camp. because of the French drivers stalling their cars and not being able to crank them. One car broke a fan belt and they took the whole fan off to put a belt on. Two more cars ran out of oil and ran on just the same. They were lucky enough to get back without their engine freezing, but had much trouble in getting them to run. When the cars would
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kill their engines two men would get hold to crank them. Two Frenchmen were trying to crank a car when we got tired of waiting and Bert went to see what the trouble was and found them trying to crank the thing with the spark and gas advanced and in gear. Lucky for them they didn't succeed in cranking they car or it would have run over them. Some of them would block the wheels on a grade then take the brake off before trying to start. A bigger bunch of boobs I never saw in all my life. And we had lots of fun with our friend over his French drivers. He told us that we were very good