MilColl_WWI_82_Box2

would smother in there very quickly. They take a jug of hot water to bed with them, and also sit with their feet on little braziers full of coals.

Wood is very scarce in France. Consequently the people use every twig available, They pick up faggots and bundle them up very neatly for kindling.

I have seen them shipped in case. We would think it a funny thing if we saw a pile of brushwood going by on a car.

Another feature peculiar to this country is the lack of clothes lines. The weather is so damp that the people have to dry their clothes indoors. Consequently each house has a drying attic. The washerwo-

man takes my clothes to either the fountain or the town wash-house to wash them. Then she brings them home for Madame Humbloe to dry in the attic.

The chief character of the country is this village life. Everyone lives in the village. There are no isolated farm houses. Around the village all the open fields where the farmers go to cultivate their

3 crops. But their crops, and their cattle they keep under the same roof with them in the village. There is always a big church that is constantly busy with the confessions, weddings and funerals of the town in addition to the regular masses. And all the people live like one big

[Dec 5, 1917?]

Dear Mama, Snow came last night and covered up the manure piles so that this morning they look as pretty as grass plots. The cold has frozen their smell stiff and hardened the mud, and the fountain now [?parts?] crystal clear on a white village. What a lovely morning!

It is a morning of leisure for me too because my company worked yesterday, which was Sunday, at unloading freight. I have just [censored?] one

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