Many thanks for the pink silk piejamas, with the red ribbon ties.
Skinny sez they are "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." It don't
take much to make Skinny poetical. When the Sarge got a lamp at 'em he
sed "they would move _anyone_ to poetry, if he didn't "do the Dutch"
first."

I'm afraid the Pres. is not running this trainin biz rite. What's
the use of wisin up this big bunch of guys, when one company of cooks
could wipe out the Fritzies in twenty four hours, if they can get 'em
to eat some of the stuff they wish onto us. We have seventeen kinds of
meat everyday--hash. That's all rite. We can stand fur that, but when
they put raisins in it on Sunday and call it puddin, good nite, its
enough to make a feller bat 1000 in the booze league.

Speakin of shufflin off reminds me that Skinny 'lows as how we ought
to make our wills before we hit the briny trail. The only WILL I'm
worried about Julie, is WILL I cum back? And that's no Bullsheveki,
fur you know derie when one of them tin fish strikes a transport, yer
jest as well let your voice fall. Say Julie, I'm not fur this country
down here a-tall. It has ticks; chiggers and nats all open fur biz
at one and the same time. You never had a tick on you did you Julie?
Well a dog with two sets of flees isn't any busier than said tick.
They ought to draft a lot of 'em into the engineers. They are the best
lil' trench diggers on earth. They always selects a place between your
shoulder blades where you can't reach 'em and dig in. The think-tank
of a tick is not large; but unless they have been shootin hop into
themselves, they can make a guy feel as small as a bar of soap after a
hard days washin. Yours till the kaiser's mustash droops,

BARNEY.