listen and hear their plans and what's comeing off and besides I would get
a chance to see something of Paris and it don't look like none of us only
the officers would be give leave to go there but of course I would go if
Black Jack wanted me and after all Al I am here to give Uncle Sam the best
I have got and if I can serve the stars and strips better by sticking pins
in a map then getting in the trenchs why all right and it takes more than
common soldiers to win a war and if I am more use to them as a kind of
adviser instead of carrying a bayonet why I will sacrifice my own feelings
for the good of the cause like I often done in baseball.

But they's another thing Alcock told me Al and that is that the war board
they have got has got gens. on it from all the different countrys like the
U. S. and England and France and Spain and of course they are more French
gens. than anything else on acct. of the war being here in France so
probably they do some of their talking in French and Alcock says if he was
I he would get busy and try and learn enough French so as I could make
myself understood when I had something to say and of course they probably
won't nothing come out of it all but still and all I always says its best
to be ready for whatever comes off and if the U. S. had of been ready for
this war I wouldn't be setting here writeing this letter now but I would be
takeing a plunge in one of them Berlin brewry vats.

Any way I have all ready picked enough French so as I can talk it pretty
good and I would be O. K. if I could understand it when they are talking it
off but to hear them talk it off you would think they seen their dinner at
the end of the sentence.

Well Al I will tell you how things comes out and I hope Black Jack will
forget all about it and lay off me so as I can get into the real fighting
instead of standing in front of a map all the wile like a school teacher or