[No date, but before Jan. 12, 1916]

Dear Lola

Please excuse me for not writing before but I have been so busy that I haven't had time to write. We have been having our musketry course all this last week and were to have finished it by Wednesday but I don't know whether we will or not now for we have been quarantined with spiral meningitis and have a guard in front of our huts with fixed bayonets and we can't leave the lines without an officer in charge. You can see by the address that we have changed from E company to B so don't forget to tell your father please. I haven't heard from your father or Mr. Baker either since last November so please ask him if I have offended him and if so I am very sorry and did not do it intentionally and I miss his letters very much. I hope you will write as often as you can for I always look forward to your letters and if we are kept in quarantine I will look forward to them twice as much. Our Major took us out for a little march and a football match this afternoon so that we should not feel too bad over bring quarentined. A team from our company played a team of machine gunners and beat them pretty bad. The score was 9-1 for our company and every time we cheered instead of cheering for B company 36th Battn we always cheered for the old 74th Battallion. I was down to see Fred twice and wrote once but he was away on pass and I missed him and I haven't heard from him yet. They told me in the orderly room where he works that he had gone to Ireland and I left word that I would be down today but as we are in quarentined I can't go down. As soon as we are finished our musketry course we are ready for France and we expected to be through by the 12th of January but I guess we won't go across the channel for a week or two yet. How is everybody getting along over there. I guess you get lots of skating over there now. Have you had any skating at Huttonville this winter? I guess there is not many fellows around there to clean the snow off this year. We are all well over here just now although Bob Dexter is in the hospital with blood poison in his arm but he is better now as he'll soon be sent back to quarentine. As soon as we heard of being in " " we all got cleaned up and slipped out of camp by the back way before the military police got wise and in ten minutes we were nearly all out of camp. You see it isn't what you do in the army it is what you get caught doing, and I seem to be pretty lucky in that respect. Well Lola I guess I must close now for the order has just come round that we go to the ranges in the morning and that means that I've got to get my kit ready so I must close now and remember me to Mrs. Passmore & Mr. Passmore and Jennie and I'll say good-bye and write as often as possible.

Yours Sincerely
George H Tripp