To Bertha from C.C. Ballou – February 11, 1919
I enclose some letters to assist you in writing French.
Headquarters 19th Division
(U.S. ARMY)
Camp Dodge, Iowa
My dear Bertha,
It is three months today since the last shot was fired. What a change I find a little blue at times, but when I think of the fact that you don’t feel that I have done so badly, and that you can love the ugly photograph because it is most like me. I feel more content. I am sorry that I did not make a brilliant success – for your sake and that of the others. Yet perhaps I did about as well as I could with the tools I had to work with. I certainly tried.
I will have completed by Friday the mustering out of the 19th Division if the _____ approve the recommendation I wired today that the H.Q. also be mustered out. Of course I knew that it meant in all probability my own immediate demotion, but I can see no good reason for delaying the muster out the headquarters and as I recommended just as I would had my own head not been concerned.
Where I will go next, I don’t even guess. Perhaps to the Mexican border. I am going to talk tomorrow night to the colored people of Des Moines and to another bunch on Friday night; and to the white folks on Sunday evening. I don’t know what I will say but it will not be much.
Today I received Mamma’s letter. Glad Bowd was not hurt and sorry I did see him again. [Note: George Bowditch Hunter was Reba’s Husband. He would remarry in 1937 and retire from the Army as a Brigadier General in 1943]. I hope he will not forget us and drift entirely away. I have been trying to catch up on my letter writing since I arrived here and have the docket pretty well cleared. The letters from France will soon fall off. None have arrived since I got here.
It is a beautiful day, warm and sunshiny. There are now two good roads to Des Moines, one of brick and one of cement. I have not been in town except as I passed through coming here. The rooms here are kept fearfully hot and dry as a bone. I don’t enjoy it at all. There is very little grippe here now. Colonel Newman is here, in command of the _____ Brigade. If I stay long, I will have to get one some reading matter for evenings.