MilColl_WWI_82_Box2

[Nov 27, 1917?]

Dear Mama,

This is the eighth consecutive Thanksgiving day that I have spent away from home, but as in Warrenton, Chapel Hill, and Cambridge, so now in France my chief thought is of you at home. I don't know how many of you will be there in the dining room, but I know that there will be a bright fire in the great fire-place,

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a good meal on the table, and you at home around it, Perhaps Arthur will be there to hunt, and maybe Joe may run down from Petersbury, you will think of me I am sure, and wonder if I too am enjoying my Thanksgiving Day.

I am. In the midst of much sickness & have left quite well, my faith and cheer have not failed me

one moment, and I have many excellent [?Friends?]. Today Uncle Sam has even given us all turkey and cranberries.

Most of the day I have spent in the large town near here, shopping a little, and ga[?g?]ing around at the place. I found a bookstore and there got The Turmoil by Booth Turkington, Fish by Mary Roberts Rhinehart, and Troubled Tranton by W. E. Norris. these if they are any good will give me all the

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reading I can do for a long time.

Monsieur [?Hummblae?] has a severe cold that keeps him awake coughing most of every night. Since the French doctors are all away at the war, the American doctors here tend him, and have a hard time making him understand what to do with his medicine. Tonight he showed me some cascara pills the doctor had given him today and

2 wanted to know whether he was to dissolve them in water and wash his throat, or swallow them down. The French are great believers in heat. it confuses them that anyone sick with a cold should dare to drink cold water, they build their beds into the walls like cupboards and shut the doors on themselves when they go to bed. We