France, July 19th, 1918 My Dear Nellie:- Mother tells me what an industrious young lady you are when you are spending your vacation at home. I am sure it must be nice for her to have you at home and I know how you'll enjoy the break in the daily grind. I used to get pretty weary myself as the nice summer days began to come and it was only the menace of exams and the life shown by the pupils themselves that kept things going. My old boys are getting scattered out. One of my best Boy Scouts at Creelman has gone into a bank, Hartley Carrothers is a farmer, Wilbur Kirkpatrick, the dentist's son, there is into an office. Two of the Lipton second class students are in the Flying Corps at Toronto, one of the girls, a very nice little person, has been married. She says she thinks she can't write to me any more. Two more are teachers. We are in a part of the line just now. Came in on Wednesday night. We are a little piece back at just the right spot to watch the work of old Fritzie's heavies. He has been literally pounding a little isolated town just behind us a hundred yards or so. You can hear the shells whistle overhead as they come, then a crash and there's a cloud of dust and bricks thirty feet high. The weather has been fine, the sun nice and warm in the daytime and the nights clear. I can tell you that to get a realization of war you want to stand out above the trench on a clear bright night. There is a silence for a few minutes. Then five or six heavies break forth with a roar and a flash, the machine guns start to hammer away with a sound like someone pounding some old typewriters, the smaller eighteen pounders 'poof poof' in front of you, the Very light shoot up in groups of one, two and three mixed alternately light up the surrounding front for a few seconds and then die, the aeroplanes purr as they pass overhead laden with their load of destruction-seeking bombs, limbers rattle along the paved road as they carry up to the men in the front line the daily quota of rations and mail, perhaps a letter from home or a box of sweets, an officer hurriedly galloping back adds his share to the disturbing sound and then all is quiet again. Then as you picture the beauty of the night and think what such a night would mean at home to the millions of men here, you get an indefinable conception of what that terrible word "War" really means, a conception that can be realized but never properly described. I had your letter of June 24th, also some papers from you a short time ago. Well, little girl, I must close and have a little nap in some shady spot where Heinie can't spot me. Yours F Cousins