crabbing till you can't rest and he keeps the room filled up with cigarette
smoke and no air and you can't open up the port hole or you would freeze
to death so about the only chance I get to sleep is up in the parlor in a
chair in the day time and you don't no sooner set down when they got a life
boat drill or something and for some reason another they have a role call
every day and that means everybody has got to answer to their name to see
if we are all on board just as if they was any other place to go.

When they give the signal for a life boat drill everybody has got to stick
their life belt on and go to the boat where they have been given the number
of it and even when everybody knows its a fake you got to show up just the
same and yesterday they was one bird thats supposed to go in our life boat
and he was sea sick and he didn't show up so they went after him and one of
the officers told him that wasn't no excuse and what would he do if he was
sea sick and the ship was realy sinking and he says he thought it was realy
sinking ever since we started.

Well Al we got some crowd on the boat and they's two French officers along
with us that been giveing drills and etc. in one of the camps in the U. S.
and navy officers and gunners and a man would almost wish something would
happen because I bet we would put up some battle.

Lee just come in and asked me who was I writeing to and I told him and he
says I better be careful to not write nothing against anybody on the trip
just as if I would. But any way I asked him why not and he says because all
the mail would be opened and read by the censor so I said "Yes but he won't
see this because I won't mail it till we get across the old pond and then I
will mail all my letters at once."

So he said a man can't do it that way because just before we hit land the