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Date: June 17th 1898
To
Mother and Sister
From
William
Letter

Camp G. H. Thomas Ga
June 17th

Dear Mother and Sister

Your welcome letter carne to hand a few days ago, monday night but I had just written one day previous and "rund" out of words. Last night I got a letter from Pa and one from maggie and today from Alma that is the way I like to see them comee I think I will be quite a proficient letter writer if I keep this up. We have what you might call beautiful weather here this week though it rains every few hours. I was standing in a field the other day the sun was shing brightly with a cloud about the size of a mans hand over me and do you know that twenty feet from me it was coming down bucketfuls and the sun shining on me I was looking for souveniers of the Civil war all that I have found is a rivet out of some old harness one man in our regiment has found over 70 bullets besides other stuff. I see by the papers that they are getting up a large box of eatables if I had known earlier I would have had you send me down some pickles if I had some of your pickles I could eat a little if I had some pickles. I don't think I told you about going to the spring to get some water well while at the spring there was an old sow carne along with a litter of fresh pork there were four of us so we captured one. Well he squeeled He ducked corning home we met a flock of nice young roosters that set our coon blood boiling I was the lucky one the rest got a handful of feathers You can imagine what a good square I had for once payday I am going to look the owner up if he had one. The boys are all feeling better now there is only a few cases of Measles in the Hospital and I am feeling well myself if I do sweat a pail a day You asked if roses were all gone here yet. Well when I was on that eventful water expedition I saw all kinds of wild flowers and among them was the wild rose it is on a much larger bush than the Northern and resembles an american beauty and about 3 or 4 hundred on a bush the appels and other fruit are ripening there is a lot of poisoned Ivy here and a lot of the boys got poisoned by it and there is the ocasional clumps of cactus here and there then there is a vine that climbs trees with beautiful flowers of all colors growing on them they are shaped like a small Lily and some say they are poisonous. If Sunday is a nice day I am going to break it by picking some black rasberries if I stay around camp I will have to work anyway our ammunition has come and I hear that we get some Kraig Jorgenson guns and that we start soon for Porto Rico I had all kinds of news to tell before I started but it has all left me and the first call for bed has blown

Will

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