Jan 30, 1918

Dear Marie,

No letter came Monday nor Tuesday but three came today which made it all
“fine” once more. You didn’t tell me exactly what an Earth Trodder is,
so I am not justified in condemning the idea, however it doesn’t
“listen” very good to me. I would be glad to get a fruit cake from you,
so you better get Blanche to show you how to make one. I would eat it
all myself, too – you see if the whole First Section were tied up with a
“tummy-ache”, Co. “A” would be very seriously crippled.

Marie, don’t ever think for a minute that I will get tired of receiving
your letters. I am at least as glad to get letters from you as you are
to hear from me. But at the same time I think it would be better to
write every other day as lots of times I get two letters on one day and
none the preceding day.

Now please, little sweetheart, don’t think that I am tiring of you in
the least.

We rode all afternoon yesterday. As soon as we hit the hills we left the
main road and hit for the tall timber. You should have heard the hooting
and yelling when we got in the woods. There is only about six inches of
snow on the ground and the ground underneath is hard and slippery so we
could not trot very much. Even at that we had a lot of fun. Our new
first sergeant is a fine fellow. The other one was promoted and Sgt.
Ryan took his place. Sgt. Ryan is the one that got kicked just below the
eye by the same horse that tickled me on the jaw. I guess he will wear
that scar all his life.

The Co. had a big test in semaphore yesterday. We are supposed to be
able to send and receive five to eight words a minute in wig-wag and ten
to fifteen words a minute in semaphore. The words are supposed to
average five letters each. It is easy to read wig-wag as it is
impossible to transmit very fast with a large flag. I didn’t take the
test as I was down to the class at the Army Service School. During the
wig-wag class period in the afternoon, I sent wig-wag at the rate of
eleven words per minute for a few minutes, and when I quit I had a
blister on the side of my hand. Sending semaphore is no so much work,
but it takes lots of practice and a quick eye to get fifteen (that is 75
letters) a minute. This is about as fast as the average person writes. I
can receive about twelve words and send about fifteen words per minute.
Sometimes we semaphore French words and one is out of luck if he misses
a single letter.

This morning I froze the top of my left ear on my way to school. It was
hard and stiff so I kept it in the snow until it got soft then I turned
the cold water facet on it. It is swollen up and is pretty blue and
tender, but I guess it will be O.K. in a few days.

Tonight, Stock and I hiked to town – an auto delivery took us most of
the way.

Tomorrow is muster day, so we will have Battalion inspection, which
means that yours truly must scrub his leggings before he hits that
little straw bunk.

Stock says “That’s enough Bassett, that’s enough” and I guess he is
right, don’t you think so?

With Love,

Forrest.

I know this writing is fierce but I had to hurry.