FWF TO EEI 10131917

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FWF TO EEI 10131917

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In Albania, on the shore of her most beauti– ful lake, Oct 13, 1917. I regret the necessity of using a typewriter, for your sake, little Particularist. I said one time that I should not feel called upon to explain my reasons for typing instead of penning to you, but that you could understand that I shouldn't do it unless there was no op– portunity at the time to use a pen. But, you see, it is like this: I really do like you a little bit, I like you so much, in fact, that I will explain, even tho I feel somewhat like a weakling in doing so! A weakling in the Emersonian sense. And so –––– I am, as I said, on the shore of the most beautiful lake in Albania. I am alone at the post. Instead of its being the wild and unpopulated place that you probably imagine it to be from the term "post", it is in a town, a town which the Boche rested in for three years and more before the latest French advance. I am in a real Albanian house –– a square, stone structure, in which an Albanian (Mohammedan Albanian) family lives also. We have one half. They have the other. I have just sent Ben Curler and Jack Nichols into the Base Hospital with loads of malades, and I am waiting here for whatever calls come in for the post nearest the lines. I may have no call during the day. I may haveaa dozen. But I only have a small amount of paper, and have no way of getting more here when this is done. I have no ink. I have much more to tell you than I possibly could get on the amount of paper I have, should I write with the stub of a pencil that I have. I may not have an opportunity to write to you again for several days, and I want to take advantage of this. I think that you would prefer me to take advantage of this, rather than have me leave out a lot of things that I want to tell you, and rather than have me sit around reading the dictionary and the Bible, which are all the books that I have with me, instead of writing to you at all. There. Now you may read or put aside till you feel like reading my news whether it is in cold print or not! "Do just as you like."

I am going to France. I may be starting in the next week. The French section that is to re– place our unit here is already on its way from Salonique. Some of them have arrived at our home now. We are simply waiting for an order of movement. We are in a state of rather excited anticipation, for it may mean a change of service for us soon. It may mean a return to the U.S.A. for some of us! It is more likely to mean re–enlisting for the duration of the war with the American Forces in the Ambulance Service for me. And that is all that I know of the matter now. We are ex– pecting definite word tout de suite.

Your letters of August 24 and 27 came to me day before yesterday. And when you said that you were about to board the next airship mewards, I almost believed that you really might come out of the sky and promenade the lake shore in Albania with me some sunny afternoon –– and wander about in all sorts of strange nooks with me, and listen to the Moham medan priest pray in a high pitched voice from the top of the minaret that I am looking at now ––– "Allah Allah Allah! There is but one God, and he is Allah!" And be impressed as I am when less the Mohammedan peasants stop by the roadside and rest while he cries his cry from the four sides of the minaret. You, little Romantic maiden, with your desires for a life of the unusual, with me, a sentimentalist of the old times, with my sometimes longing to be home from my wanderings in strange places, and to settle down and domesticate with some maid of domicili– ary longings! What an opportunity I have –––––––––––––

I don't remember now what the opportunity was that I was about to ela– borate on. The other two fellows who are to hold down the post with me for the next twenty–four hours have arrived, and I have cooked a

Last edit about 6 years ago by kjeldmooi
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meal for one of them, and the other brought in a live poule, which I killed and cleaned. Now my duties for the day in the culinary art are supposed to be over. Harry Frantz took the call that came in from the front so that I could continue this letter to you. I think that the opportunity to which I referred had something to do with your effusions on the unconventional life, and I was going to say some– thing in the way of delicate bantering –– but that mood has passed. Only let me say that I appreciate the longings that you had at the time you wrote, and sympathise with them most thoroly. However, do you remember Bobby Burns's poem about "Oh, leave novels, Ye Mauchlin Belles!"? I, however, have reread part of "The Beloved Vagabond" and have found it as inspiring to be "different" as on the first reading.

The word brought in by Chittenden just now is that we are to leave here on the 20th of this month, and that we are to be limited as to the amount of baggage that we can take. Many of the fellows are selling their belongings to French and Albanians now in our home town in order to cut down to the minimum. They have it on us, who are to stay out at the posts till a couple of days before we leave. The packages that we have been expecting have been held for us in Paris, and I am not expecting to get any more mail until that time, which may be the lat– ter part of November. It will be that long if we take as much time in going back as we took in coming. I am going to try to get to go to Athens, if possible, on the way back, and to get a stop–over in Rome and Naples. It is difficult to think of anything else than the impending change, now that it is really apon us.

For the snaps –– je vous remercie bien –– They were almost like a petite visite to the other world –– the other world of you, which I alternately think of as that of realities and dreams. But I am per– fently sane, my Dear, and know that all the world is but very very little, and that it is all real –– or all dream, depending on how we look at it. The study in Fingers and Toes was delicious. I imagine that it was taken in the morning just after the little chirper woke up after dreams ununderstandable by us –– dreams of the world from which she has so recently come –– dreams of the world which may still be for her the world of real realities! And the pictures taken by Bruce at the beach –– of them I liked ''The Lady of Mystery" best. But why "Mystery"? There was nothing to me mysterious about it. It was just the picture of a young lady from Town at the Beach for a day with her beau! And those who past by at the time the picture was taken knew mighty well that that was what it was. The Mystery may have been, that the pensive look in her eyes was because she was think– ing of her lover, who was far, far away. And her lover, who is far, far away, as he lets his eyes caress the counterfeit, is conceited enough to think that that was really what she was thinking of! How appropriate was the Coca Cola, or something similar, sign that serves as a background for the one of you sitting on the sands among the sun– shades Cracker Jack boxes! And as I look now out on the beautiful, purple and brown and green lake, with its perfect "Bathing Beach", I think of the impending civilisation of the country in which we are now, and of the inevitable building of a Casino, with special accommodations for automobilists, music and dancing. It would not be to Ochrida the Resort, to which I would bring you, my petite Summer Girl! I was wishing that you had sent me a snap of Bruce, too. I should like to see one if you have it.

You may be assured that I do approve of your lessons in music, and I am hoping that the pleasure you are getting out of them may continue. I should be just a bit ashamed if I were to tell you truly how very much I am anticipating spending an evening once in a while with you

Last edit about 6 years ago by kjeldmooi
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and enjoying with you the kind of music that we both find infinite pleasure in. Once in a while! Sometime.

Yes, Dear., I do think many a Sunday –– when I know it is Sunday –– of what might be going on, as you say, if –– if –– but –– Except in a sort of imaginary way there is no difference between Sunday here and any other day of the week. We have no calendars. The only way I have of telling is by my diary notes –– which I keep in a sort of desultory way.

If I were to tell you every time that I am interrupted in my letters, Edna, they would –– most of them –– be simply a series of statements of what I have been doing in the meantime. Two calls have come in, one of which I took, to M––, over the new French road around their part of the lake. One big nigger couché. The road is blasted out of solid rock along the shore, and at some places the top of the ambulance scrapes on jutting points while the wheels are within six inches of a perpendicular drop to the water. I had to wait for the genie to clear away the debris from dynamite explosions twice. A chauffeur of a colonel came in demanding a spark plug for his car, which was stalled on the road. Chit wants to know constantly how much longer I think the rooster should be cooked, and whether onions require more or less time than rice. Yousee, we are going to have some feed. He purchased some sugar from a store in the village. The purchase had to be made sort o' sub rosa, for it is defendu to sell such a commodity. He paid ten francs for one ocre –– three pounds –– that is, that was the price which the merchant asked for it. But he got it for seven francs fifty, because of the merchant's inability to figure change in French money. He is used to dealing with the Boche. We get a small amount of sugar for the unit at the French ravetaillement station, on a ticket that tells the number of men for which the rations are.

In spite of the fact that most of the fellows are jubilant over the prospects of returning to Paris and foods delectable, I am just a bit wistful. It has been pleasant, the work, the experiences in a such strange land have been, and it has all seemed very much worth while. And I have been sort of anticipating the terrors of the winter here in the mountains –– and the beauties of the country, as they must be when the snow is deep.

I have made another run in the meantime. It has been raining, and the streams that I had to ford were up over the running board of the car, The hill on the way to C––, where I went, is too steep for a voiture to climb loaded, and there are some road workers there that we get to push us in the steepest places. And I have also had the antici– pated chicken feed. Chicken and onions and rice with sugar –– and war bread actually tasted good. Chit and Harry had it already for me when I returned, and now I have sat and talked with the kids –– jes feelin' good an' thinkin' about how good I felt. Harry is now telling about one time when he was in Kansas City, and a bum showed him an ad. in the paper for a gardener, an ad. in which references were required. The bum said that he was a good gardener, but had no references, and wanted to know what to do about it. Harry said he could fix that up OK, went over to the writing desk –– the same desk on which I wrote you an after midnight letter on President Wilson's war address –– and wrote the man out a flowery recommendation, saying that the fellow had been in his employ foo several years and his work had been entirely satis– factory, signing his own name. We have also been talking over God– mothers. Harry's told him that if he was lonely and wanted someone else to write to him, she was sending her daughter's address.

Last edit about 6 years ago by kjeldmooi
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And that her daughter's name was Frieda. If he didn't feel in need of more friends, he could send some other young man's name, and her daughter Frieda would write to him. She felt that her daughter Frieda would prove and interesting correspondent, bbut that she would not write to anyone whom Harry could not reccomend unreservedly. ''You see,'' she said, ''how much trust I place in you.''

I received the prize of all the ''Marraine'' letters that have come to us. It was from a really educated and sensible lady who was sincerely desirous of being a help to some brave laddie. She told me all about her happy married life, how her husband had enlisted as a sergeant in the commissary department, and they had moved to Palo Alto from Berke– ley so that she could keep house for him while he was working at Camp Fremont. She wants me to ask her for anything that I may need, such as warm underwear and such, and anything that I may want in the way of little luxuries, such as tobacco and candies. She has already send me a box of Durham Tobacco, as it has been her experience that soldier boys prefer to roll their own rather than smoking tailor mades. Those were exact her words. Sometime I'll showw you her let ter. It was so sincere and frank, that I answered her as soon as I had time. She said that if I didn't want her to be wished upon me, to give the name of someone who was really in need of things and frinds. I was perfectly frank with her and said that would accept her with joy, of course, (for I am absolutely alone in the world, and have no such thing as a lover nor a mother nor a sister!) No, but I told her that I admired her for her sincerity, and that women such as she are the real backbone of the nation, and that anything that she had sent me that I did not need, I would find plenty of places for among my comrades or among the soldiers. And I certainly will. This has been the first strange Godmother that has been perfectly sane, of all those who have written to any of us. Frank has received several magazines of two years' age, addressed to ''My Godson, Frank'', and the same person –– Dr Luella Cool –– has sent some of the same commodity to ''My Godson, Donald Fox.'' It is a shame, the amount of fun we have out of these missives.

The other fellows have gont to bed, and I must too, for there are calls for all of us the first thing in the morning, early, and it is now the ungodly hour of nine o'clock! The searchlight is sweeping over the lake in search of Boche boats that have been suspected of sending a– cross our side of the lake Albanian omatadji (no one knows how to spell these wildmen in rags, who fight for the side that pays them the most) as spies at night. It is an impressive and gorgeous spectacle, with its reflection on the heavily clouded sky.

Goodnight, my Dear. You will hear from me in the next few weeks just as often as I possibly can write, and when there is anything to tell and I haven't time, then I'll send you a note anyhow! And I may have time for a long letter to you before we leave here. The news that I got on the way in on my last run, after starting this to you, was that the chances of seeing Athens were becomming smaller. And we were to go off duty on the 15th of this mont –– day after tomorrow. And to– morrow will be Sunday for me, altho I will not be abble to tell it from the things that I do or not do. And now, it is –– let me see –– it is Saturday in the morning for you. I wonder what you may be doing.

I love you just the same as if I had been able to write to you today with a pen, and just the same as if I hadn't been a leetle joky about the place where the snaps were taken. I hope to send you some more at least when we arrive in Paris. Goodnight now.

Yorvin Wynne

Last edit about 6 years ago by kjeldmooi
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