Letters between Doris and Murray, February 20 - March 30, 1918 (an exchange)

February 20 1918

Dear Murray:

I will start this now and finish when I have time for it is almost five o'clock. I received your very welcome letter last night and needless to say enjoyed it greatly. Have been watching the mail box every day for a month for that letter. Sorry you have not received the candy but hope it has turned up by the time this reaches you. If it has not it probably never will.

Am still at the same place as you will see by the letter head and expect to stay here for some time. I have not been here very long but I feel as if I had always been here, it is so nice and pleasant. There are no scraps with delivery men, no complaints from unsatisfied patrons, and everyone is so considerate and pleasant. All I said about the place in the letter I wrote you the first day I was here is all O.K. and more of the same kind. I have a small electric stove here so make coffee every noon. It is a lot of trouble to go out to lunch so bring it with me, am a little out of the way of good places to eat that are not too expensive.

I was delighted to receive the ribbons you sent and also the information. Have been reading "Over the Top" by Arthur Guy Empey and had decided that the two stripes designated the number of times you had been wounded from what he said about them. It is rather an interesting book, that is, to me who has not experienced the life over there, how true it all is of course I do not know. Probably is not as bad as the real thing, for he makes a good deal of it rather funny.

Clothes are always an interesting subject in the crowd I go with, sometimes some of them are screams. They talk whenever you look at them they are so loud, but then that is the general run of clothes now, and this particular set are no worse than the rest, my own are pretty vivid sometimes. I am just having a vivid yellow coat that I bought last spring toned down with a brown dye. I wore it to the show one rainy night and the paint came off the seats in streaks on my coat, it was some mess.

January 21, [Likely error. Meant Feb 21]

Had to quit this for it came closing time and I had to skip. I have just time to make my train if I leave here at five, so seldom wait after the clock says the day is over.

You mention playing bridge, it is one game I have not mastered yet, Have played a couple of times but as yet can not say I know how. It is almost the only card game that I do not know, I should say did not know, for I play very little now. When Gordon was home I played all the time, but about the only thing I ever play now is whist and five hundred and do not care for those. I did know almost everthing from casino up, but cared most for pedro and poker. For about six months we played pedro almost every night, but that is two or three years ago. I am still lucky when I pay attention to the game but whist almost puts me to sleep and I can seldom keep my mind where it belongs.

You say since it is "Lucky at cards, unlucky at love" and you wonder which girl has turned you down. You ought to be unlucky if there is more than one girl that you have given the chance to turn you down. Your letter sounds as if you had proposed to several without giving one a chance to answer before you asked the next. You ought to be unlucky enough to have them all accept you instead of turning you down. I should call the last luck under those circumstances.

You speak of the Engineers as "Sappers" and say you will explain if I am interested. Of course I am interested. The things that to you are the common occurences of life, are, to us who are far away from such things, very interesting. Everyone is very much interested in everything that goes on in the war, and naturally in the men who are doing the fighting, what they do, how they live and all. You said in one letter that every magazine article was about the war and you were getting tired of reading them. Do you realize that it is the only way in which we, who have to stay at home, can learn anything about what is going on over there. If it is decorated up by the author's imagination still it contains some truth, and that is far better than nothing,

I get so tired of setting around when there is so much to do. And what is worse is to see some of these boys and men who are either just under the draft age or just over it loafing around when they are needed. One of the girls living in our neighborhood has enlisted in the navy. She is in one of the offices here in San Francisco at present but hopes to be sent to Washington. She is a stenographer, and like all the other girls in the navy, has the rank of yeoman. Just what that is I do not know although I know it is not much, I believe there is only one rank lower than that but can not say. Anyway she is a yeoman, or yeomanette as they call the girls, and has enlisted for four years. I can't pass the required test in speed or you may be sure that I would be there too. Like Gordon, I hate staying at home when there is some-thing to be done.

I told you in my last letter that Gordon was in Antioch but I did not think he would stay there. Well he fooled me. He has decided to stay for a while anyway, says there is more chance of learning about the auto business in a small town than in a large one. Helen hates it up there, she is still at the old place in Oakland. When they will move up there I do not know. We miss having Gordon where we could go to see him, for while we did not go often, still we could go if we wanted to. Mother misses him badly.

Mother has been in bed for the past week, was still there this morning when I left but was threatening to get up today. I objected strongly to her doing so but doubt if my objections had much effect. She has rhemmatism of the heart and that is serious you know. Her illness has left me with considerable work to do, for while we have a woman come in to do the dishes + care for Mother during the forenoon, Doda is there in the afternoon, it still leaves me with a good deal todo. Tomorrow, which is the Honorable Washington's birthday, I am going to spend my holiday cooking, sweeping, washing, and making a new kimona for Mother. I feel now as if I never would be rested again. I have breakfast to get, Dad's and my lunch to put up, Mother to feed and straighten her room, and get ready to leave by the 7:24 train. I missed it this morning and was late to the office as a result. It keeps me hustling I assure you, and then I help with the evening work when I get home. Doda looks after her Mother in the morning and does what ever she can before she leaves and then gets dinner in the evening.

Please excuse the appearance of this letter as I want to finish before I leave for it will be Saturday before I will be back at the machine again and I will probably have know time for correspondence that day.

It is five to five now so will close in a hurry. Will try to have more time next time I write.

Your sincere cousin,

Doris E. Robertson

P.S. My pen has run dry and all the inkwells are locked in the other desks so must sign in pencil.

March 30th 1918

Dear Doris,

Hope you don't mind my answering your letter in this way, but I'm shy on paper and besides by the time this reaches you, you will have forgotten what you wrote about and wouldn't know what I was referring to. – Efficiency, what?

Well, tomorrow will be Easter Sunday. – I'll bet a five franc note that you are spending this evening trimming a new hat for tomorrow. – I always like Easter. – This is the fourth I have spent overseas but am going to try and get a trip home before the next one. – I suppose all sorts of wild headlines are appearing in the papers these days. – As you can imagine we are all fairly busy. – It's "open season" for huns and the killing is good. – What gains he may have made will never make up for his losses in casualties. – His losses in killed alone are enormous and altho it gives us a little extra trouble, that is what we came over here for and I hope that before we get home we shall have exterminated the entire nation. – I say this in all seriousness for I am firmly convinced that there is no room in the world for anything of german origin. – If we ever give them a chance to rise again they will only start this business all over again. – They are like a cancerous growth on the earth. – It is no use to cut out part for so long as any of the root remains it will grow up and cause more trouble. – I used to be a peaceable citizen but the hun has taught me things about hatred that I never imagined possible. – But there I'm starting to talk war and if I ever do that I rave.

– I saw Cousin Ross from Toronto the other day. – He was just on his way back from the base where he had been to school. – Spent most of the day with me while waiting for a train to take him on to his battalion which was in the line. – He was looking well and cheery.

So sorry to hear of Auntie's illness but hope she was better long before this arrives. – Well must quit this now. – Hope you don't find the rest of it too hard to follow. – If you just start at the beginning of your own letter + read this you will find notes referring to what you wrote about.

Cheerio,

Murray

Address still P.B. Co'y - Can. Engrs B.E.F.

[In response to Doris' paragraph about being "Lucky at cards, unlucky at love"]

That's the proper spirit – You see I find that the best way to enjoy leave when lucky enough to get it is to fall madly in love with some nice little flapper. You are only over there for ten days and must make the most of your time. – Then you come back to France for three to six months, and have plenty of time to get over the case before next leave when you start all over again. – Of course, this "falling" business is simple enough as far as I am concerned (in fact the difficulty with me is not to "fall" for more than two or three at once) but I am not so conceited as to think that it is reciprocated, which is just as well as it might cause complications.

– However, this is all strictly confidential between you and I, see. – I don't want to lose my job at home.

[In response to "You speak of the Engineers as "Sappers" and say you will explain if I am interested. Of course I am interested."]

The term "sapper" is used to denote the rank of an enlisted man in the Royal Engineers, in the same way that the word "private" is applied to an enlisted man in the infantry or "gunner" in the Royal Artillery. – Hence the Corps of Royal Engineers is commonly spoken of in the service as "The Sappers" and Royal Regt of Artillery as "The Gunners" – The infantry have no particular nickname as a whole (tho often spoken of as P.B.I. which means "poor bally infantry") tho most of the regts have pet names of their own. – All Highland Regts are classed as "the jocks"

When I said that "the sappers" were often called other things I was merely alluding to the fact that owing to the nature of their duties they are often subjected to severe criticism by the Tommies. – Our duties consist chiefly of supervising Tommy's efforts at digging, wiring, etc. – From this Tommy gets sort of an idea that we sit up nights racking our brains for dirty jobs to give him and that if there were no engineers there would be no "_____ _____ working parties" – When expressing such an opinion his supply of adjectives seems to be very limited but such as he has he uses with such emphatic repetition that very little doubt is left in the mind of his hearers as to what he thinks of the "____ ____ R.E."

[In response to "You said in one letter that every magazine article was about the war and you were getting tired of reading them. Do you realize that it is the only way in which we, who have to stay at home, can learn anything about what is going on over there"]

If you want more or less authentic war stuff, get hold of Ian Hay's books "The First Hundred Thousand" and "Further Chronicles of K1" – Ian Hay (Capt. Ian Hay Beith) was our here for a long time as an officer in a Highland Regt and knows what he is talking about. – I believe he went to the States last year with the British Mission. – I have an old copy of the "1st 100,000" that I promised to send a friend of mother's in mass. – Will ask her to forward it to you when read.

Some of the descriptive articles in the Sat. Eve. Post. are fairly authentic. – I mean the serious ones not the purely war story heroic stuff which is ROTTEN and the plot is always highly improbable. – The former variety is usually pretty near correct tho they get a lot of things twisted. – Nothing pleases a Tommy better than to get hold of a journalist and "pull his leg".