Letter to Mom and Dad - 10 September 1917

Dear Mother & Dad:

At last I found an opportunity to sit down and write you a letter.

We arrived here at 11.00 AM. After unloading our freight cards, we set up our tents and finished at around 7.00PM.

This certainly is a wonderful camp, with big mess halls and electric lights in the tents -- and you should see and smell the pine trees! They're huge! All the boys say it's the most wonderful camp they've ever been in.

As I wrote you previously, I purchased a dandy kodak in Texarkana, Arkansas when our train stopped there briefly to take on water and coal. I'll be taking plenty of pictures so that you may know at first hand just what a wonderful place this is. We passed through some fine southern country on our way here and saw many cotton fields and plantations with colored help that reminded me of pre-civil war days! Everyone waved at us as we passed through.

Just took a refreshing shower in our brand-new shower bath hall and feel real clean and good. Am writing this in the YMCA building here and it's really some big place. It's an enormous hall with magazines, newspapers, writing paper, books, victrola, and piano - in fact everthing that goes with a big men's club, so you needn't worry about my comfort. Our mess halls are all electrically lighted with large benches to sit on.

Johnson is sitting alongside of me also writing home. We were scouting around and foraging for candles or a lantern for our tent because our electric lights aren't connected up as yet and we just happened to roam over here and found this YMCA bldg.

We'll be going back to our tent now that we've finished writing. Write me, Camp Logan, 2nd Artillery, Houston, Texas. I'll write again tomorrow.

Your loving son,

(signed) George

PS: When I went over to Al's to say good-bye, she cried like a baby. I didn't know for a moment what to do. She was ll right when we were upstairs in the parlor with the folks, but then when we came downstairs on the front porch, I said, "Well Al, I s'pose I'll have to say good bye now", and looked away for a moment. When I turned around again, she was sobbing like a baby. Why do girls have to be so emotional? But I presume she'll miss me - as I will her - because I've been over there so regularly. Well that's aobut all for now.