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FW [Faris?] 2 rue [Rapunzel?] Paris France SSU #10
Miss Edna Esther Ingels 2544 Washington Rd [?] Calif USA
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Nov 17
Again from Marseille four months after the first. Like a visit to someplace near home. Have sent you several notes en route, but civilian mails are fickle, so they say. It has been a wearisome trip from [Jarante?]. Six days with one nights rest at Livorno Italy again, and one afternoon at Marseille. Travelling 3d class with the [?], eight in a
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compartment and sitting up all night. This from Tarante, but Carl has just come in saying that we will have 1st class places reserved to Paris from here, arriving tomorrow night. The things that we have perpetrated as American officers in our travels may well establish a reputation for American efficiecy. Being merely privates in fact, we have been given preference over French officers in some cases. For instance in our stopovers at Liverno & here, no Frenchmen were allowed to leave the station, but we paraded to the best hotels and
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accepted the best as our due. This trip to Paris via 1st class from Mar seille is the prize of the lot. The routing of our section thru Athens was another. We get enough of the poilu life to sympathize heartily with the poor fellows. And after Paris, some of us may be merely poilus for the duration of the war. So that our sympathy may be intensified. Before you get this you will probably have got my Paris letters which I hope to have some leisure to write when we get there.
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and I will instruct my mother to let you know at once if I telegraph next week. My own dear, what I should chiefly wish for if I were subject to wishfulness (to which I might have to confess if I were entirely truthful) would be that I could talk with you when I come to a change of service next week in Paris - talk over things with you as we talked last April. Do not think me fool hardy if I deliberately choose a more strenuous service.
