Letter written July 1, 1918

Dear Mother-:

I have quite a little time just now with nothing to do but as luck will have it nothing at all to write to you about. Every single thing that I know about is exactly the same as it has been for the last two months and as you can well imagine, being here as long as we have, the monotony is getting to be rather dreadful.

I am sending you a photograph which a passing Frenchman took of the officers of the unit about a week ago. I am, if you are unable to recognize me, occupying the lower right corner, the facial expression being caused by the bright sun and not permanently put on by the horrors of war. Thank you very much for writing Jared (Ingersoll, an old friend from school and college –Ed.) for me. I received a letter from him a long time ago and answered it but that was the last. Have also had a couple of letters from Hunt Talmage, who is frantic because he went home and since that time he has been able neither to get into any sort of work on account of his eyes nor get back to France, having no excuse for coming. Adding worse to worse, his lady love is on this side which makes it very annoying from his point of view.

My work is still as it has been, going out at night with a convoy of trucks and delivering ammunition to the batteries, but now since things have quieted down a little we only go out about every two nights and in the rest of the time I censor letters of the company, of which since they are not too busy or tired there is a vast number. That does not sound hard but actually it is the most disagreeable task I have. First it is a perfectly horrible bore. Nine tenths of them say exactly the same thing, with varying mistakes of grammar. The other tenth vary from one or two actually clever ones, to all the tongues of Babel. More than that it takes just about three hours per day. (And he was also responsible for censoring his own letters. -.Ed)

The eternal Reg Windham (an acquaintance of Paul Hills and his family from before military service who coincidentally served with Paul in almost every unit, from the ambulance service to the same field artillery unit -.Ed) left yesterday on some sort of detached duty but things have happened so that I have turned up with him so much that it won’t be long, I am sure, before we both meet unexpectedly on the same work at some very out- of-the-way place.

This is about all there is now so good bye

With love
Paul