I could get fat here if I could stay about two weeks.

Grant composed this letter to his mother, Louise, while sitting in a bucolic French setting. He describes in detail the gas attack that he went through a month and a half before.

Convois Autos.,

S.S.U. 647,

Par B.C.M.,

France.

                          

Sunday – June 2, 1918

Dear Mother:-

The letter which I started to you last Wednesday morning at 3 o’clock will never reach you because, on reading it over the next day, I was too ashamed of it to drop it in the box. I wrote it while watching a most beautiful sunrise which seems to have gone to my head. I’m sure my morose stoicism would have startled you quite as much as it did me when I reread what I had set down on paper. It was really the first time I had been alone long enough to work into a philosophic frame of mind aided, no doubt, by the time of day and surroundings for a long time. This all took place in a town which at one time, not more than four years ago, had undoubtedly been a very beautiful place but these same four years in the firing lines has left it a lonely, desolate pile of rocks and dust. The inhabitants of this town are like so many rats or ground moles coming up out of their holes in the ruins to get a bit of fresh air and sunshine now and then but first looking carefully around to assure themselves that a common enemy is not dropping bits of Kultur in their vicinity.

     

The circumstances under which this letter is being composed, however, are quite different, being in full accord with the day. (I am sitting on a blanket with a shade tree as a back and protection against a hot sun. It is in a garden full of fragrant flowers in full bloom, honey-suckle, lilacs, daffodils and many others which I cannot call by name. And a million little bugs all very curious at my present occupation.) All of this is our back yard. These are our new quarters. To be sure, we sleep in a room over the stables but this garden is where we live. Next door is the church and cemetery. At present there are four big bells going full tilt in the belfry and I can look across and see a venerable old priest up there urging the bells on to more racket. It sounds like my Ford making a rough road at 30 per.

We have only changed our headquarters. We are still operating in the sector where we have been for the last month and a half. We have many new posts due to the shifting and interchanging of the American and French forces. This change takes me away from Boots Weidemann but give us a much better place to live. We work out of here on seven day shifts. I could get fat here if I could stay about two weeks.

The last two weeks have indeed been strenuous ones. Due to two or three of the cars being laid up for repairs and three of the drivers being in the hospital with a fever which seems to be going the rounds it has been necessary for some of us to work overtime. This is my first visit to our base for three weeks. Then the ambulance company to which we are attached has had their Fords replaced by GMCs which they consider to be too big for use for front work. I think they will find their mistake before long, however, they are a much more practical car for rough roads and heavy loads than a Ford. I only wish we had them.

About those cablegrams I sent to you. I gave them to a boy who went in to Paris and he was to send them for me--one for you and one for Dot. He returned this week and had forgotten all about them. You will have my letter telling you about my “slight” wound before a cablegram sent now would reach you so I can only hope and pray that my name has not been posted. Lest that letter be lost I will repeat my message in this.

On April 19 I was sent to a hospital with Kendrick, Risley, McCrackin, Swain, Dunlap, Gaynor and McEnnis, all 647 men, for a slight attack of gas (mustard). We were only there for three days and are perfectly all right again now. It was so trivial that I would have said nothing about it had Jack Kendrick not been reported in the States as “seriously wounded” and nearly driven his mother frantic. On hearing of this we all cabled but had to send them into Paris as there is no way of cabling from here. Mine never got off, as I have already explained. I hope you never saw my name and haven’t been worrying. You see the Boche made a raid and fed us gas for five hours. One shell hit our house and exploded in the hay directly over the room in which we were living (the gas was so bad in the cellar that we didn’t dare stay there even with our masks on). At daylight we started working our masks. We found it almost impossible to drive with our masks on and perhaps we took them off too soon. Perhaps we got gassed during the afternoon while running back and forth to our room while we evacuated the dressing station there. The gas from that one shell which pierced our roof hung there for days. My dose probably came from a gas shell which exploded in the roads, over which I was driving, about 100 yards ahead of me. I thought it was a 77 high explosive from the dust it blew up and didn’t stop to put on my mask. The dust proved to be fumes of a new gas which they call “fruit gas” (smelling like decayed fruit). We weren’t wasting any time on the road so we barely got a whiff of the stuff but it made us sick to our stomachs and caused the tears to flow in streams making if difficult to drive. My aide got it much worse than I did apparently for he is still suffering. Nobody seems to know when they were gassed because we all wore masks most of that day. Some got it in the lungs causing them to cough for weeks. (I’m talking about the eight of us now.) Some merely had trouble with their eyes for about a week or ten days. Some of us got body burns from the mustard gas. Jack Kendrick had a combination of all three and suffered considerably. The body burns didn’t develop until about ten days after the exposure. We were all released from the hospital long before we should have been but our work being so closely allied with the hospitals we were able to get treatment while we worked.

Have gotten into communication with Bill Everett and maybe we will be lucky enough to meet some of these days. We would to be up with the big noise soon.

Hap [Ahlers] tells me to tell you to tell his family that he is feeling fine. Even Hap is getting thin. What do you know about that?

     

I’ve simply got to go exploring around here before it gets dark.

     

Sincerely hope you are all well and haven’t been worrying.

Barrels of love,

Grant.