A.E.F. Passed As Censored

C.J. Ma[?] 2nd Lt[?]

Field Hospital No. 12 A.E.F., France.

Dear father:

Here sits a busted hero! Your gallant son, after marching up with the troops when they went in; after wearing blisters on his feet until they bled; after five nights and four days in the front trenches, dodging shrapnel and three-inch shells in the daytime and a Boche machine-gunner of nights; after going out stealthily to our wire just to show what a daredevil he was; after wearing a gas mask in the pitch-black of midnight-hours every time a doughboy smelled his comrade's pedal extremities and turned in a gas alarm; after all this, I say, I had to come out of there with mumps. Oui; yes; ja; si.

My jaw swelled up, but fortunately the case was very light. It only affected one side and stayed up above the neck. You can bet I kept my legs crossed.

They told me that remaining in bed was the grand cure; so to bed I went, and for ten days I never got up for "nothin". First, however, I had to walk three miles through trenches to get back from the front line to the evacuating dressing station. They then brought me back to Field Hospital 13 in an ambulance, with five doughboys who also had mumps. It was late at night; we ran without lights of course, and the Boches were shelling the road along one strip. However, they didn't hit near us.

Well, I lay on a cot in Field Hospital No. 13 for several days, listening to the nightly thuddering hymn of the guns. Then about 7.30 on a moonlight eve, me and Maguire, who is a young office laid up with a bullet in his shoulder--we were peacefully talking golf in my room, when coming toward us we heard the throbbing drone of an airplane. Now, airplanes make different sounds. The French machines have a steady, cheerful hum one likes to hear; the Boche has a throbbing drone like a giant bee--that's because of the twin motors.

BC Archives MS-1188 Box 1 File 4 PATTULLO, George Robson, 1845 - . Woodstock, Ontario Selected letters from his son George R. Pattullo Jr., 1917-1918.