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Patullo Family Letters

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Spent one night with his regiment before he arrived from the transport lines. They were in the front. I slept in the best German dugout they have yet captured. It was about 40 feet below the ground, panelled in oak, and had a piano in it. The piano was larger than the entrance ; so Heine must have brought it down in sections. Next day Burt came up and we had lunch with the colonel and then went back to his own hut behind the lines. Spent the night there and enjoyed it immensely. Next morning I saw Dick Parkinson and Charlie Hamlin ; Dick is now a Major. Then we got a couple of horses and rode back to the town where corps headquarters are. Burt remarked ---"Let's stop at my old billet and get lunch. The landlady cooks the best meal you can buy here." We did so ; it was my own billet, where I had slept before going up to the 72nd. Moreover, I was occupying the same room that Burt had slept in! The old landlady was delighted to see him. They used to call Burt Le Capitaine Rouge -- The Red Captain--but I run him a close second. After a couple of days around headquarters--by the way, I got shelled on a hill close to Lens ; with me was Major Russell of the R.C.R. ; also an engineer named Stitt, a friend of Jimmie Hunter's ; The Boche spotted us and threw ten whizzbangs around us before we could reach a safety spot ; Wow, my knees felt queer; but they remained loyal, T.G., and I was first man down that hill; The craters and shellholes and barbed wire made good speed impossible, but we did pretty well, dropping into a crater whenever we heard another coming; you can hear them a long way off--After a couple of days around headquarters I motored to, on