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- helps to tire a fellow a little. It has been raining off end on all day, at the present moment "on” being the case. Sizing it all up, I think that this is the best occupation for tonight.
Since I last wrote you, we’ve shifted our quarters twice,the last move taking place yesterday. It is a good way to see the country, but rather hard on shoe leather. Still as long as I can worm an occasional pair of shoes out of the tight-wada who run the pack store,. I guess I can "carry on".
It was just a week ago today that we moved from the little village from which I last wrote you. It wasn’t a long jaunt, somewhere around four miles, but as t’was made with an inch of snow on the ground and more falling, I was glad it wasn’t any longer. The town to which we moved is in the center of the coal mining district to.vhich I’ve referred in previous letters. Right here I want to say that the six days we spent there were just about the best I’ve put in over here.
Why? Well to begin with, there being no huts available, we were billeted out, four to six men to eacfc house. By adroit ir-an- oeuvering the kid and I managed, with two pals, to grab a dandy billet. As a general rule the French people haven’t a great ddel of liking for the English or Colonial troops, perhaps not without reason. But the people in our billet were "white" in every respect. Perhaps the fact that they were refugees from lens, about ten miles away,,had. something to do with it. Sort of kindred ^ spirits,,as it were. The mother, she’s had l£ kids by the way,told us that they left lens just' fifteen minutes before the, Germans came, slept by the roadiside that night, and next day her youngest kid,, 2 years, was born. Never saw a brighter youngster.
We weren't in the house five minutes before one of the kids came up to our room and told us to come down into the kitchen where it was warm. As he spoke in French, it took us a little time to find out what he was driving at, but when we "compreed" weren't long in accepting the invitation. Gee, that' old kitchen fire sure felt fine, and brought back memories of ha-opier days.
All this time the mother was busying herself around the stove, and in a few minutes we were proferred a fine cup of coffee. It was accepted with a "merci beaucoup", and the empty cur> placed on the table with a "tree bon cafe,madame". After a few minutes we beat it for our headquarters, about ten minutes walk.
After supper we lost no. time in getting back to the house, finding the whole family there. I mentioned that the mother had had fifteen children, but six of them were dead. One son is in the Frenoh army, and they are all wrapped up in him. The father works in the mines, also twot.other sons, , boys of seventeen and fifteen. Two young kids, boys, go to school as does also one girl. The baby is a girl, last but not least by any means, is the hard working Julie,, twenty years old, and uretty enough to pass any-
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