Lee-Huckins Hotel Oklahoma City September 30, 1917
Dear Bess:
I am writing you from Oklahoma's capital tonight. The colonel sent me over here to buy some soda pop and shoestrings and several different other things, as the Walrus would say. I am supposed to be back in camp at 3 PM tomorrow but it can't be done. The trains won't run that way. The one I came in on got here at 8 PM and the one going back leaves here at 7 A.M. tomorrow morning and then there's no other until the next morning. I shall wire him about 8 o'clock tomorrow for instructions as to whether I shall come back on the 7 o'clock train. Probably I'll get a rigging but most likely I won't. No one can leave the reservation, except to go to Lawton, without the brigadier's permission, but since Colonel Klemm is acting that capacity I had no trouble getting away for he sent me. The rest of the guys sure are green with envy. They want my brand of blarney but I can't transfer it. You should see the business I do. I am called Lieutenant Graball by Captain Carr. I took in $100 before dinner today, which makes about $450 in two days and a half, with nothing to sell but tobacco and Puritan and a few apples. I'd rather own that canteen than the trapshooters. We called a meeting of the Battery commanders today (we means me and the colonel) to make up a fund for the canteen from the Battery funds. Olney and Sermon and one or two others had so much to tell me that I finally got disgusted and asked Captain Jobes if he would lend me three thousand dollars on my John Henry to start one and he said, "You doggone bettya." I then told the outfit that I didn't want their blooming funds. The colonel wasn't present and when he learned what I'd done he simply reared up on his hind legs and threw a fit. Actually came down to my tent to tell me that he would issue an order making the outfits put up and ordered me not to borrow any money. So I didn't, but I'm going to get what I wanted out of those captains.
We are all as happy as can be expected for a bunch of house plants who have their wives and sweethearts to think of all the time. I am as brown as an Indian already.
They all want my horse. He's the best-looking plug on the job so far. If some nut offers me three hundred dollars, he's going to buy something. Drill starts in earnest tomorrow and no one is excused for any reason but a dislocated leg or neck. Both happen occasionally, but not as often as on streetcars and automobiles. Did I tell you that they simply dislocated all the principal inner workings of Lizzie? Busted the universal joint and some other contraption whose name I never heard all to pieces on the first trip out. I think they had her loaded to the guards with ice and potatoes and such other necessities as camp cooks need. I am hoping to see a letter as long as the moral law from you when I get back to camp. This one is almost that but I'm so crazy to see you that I have to say my say on paper. Nothin' but Indians in Lawton, and ugly ones at that, so you have no reason for thinking that anyone else but you ever enters my thoughts. You wouldn't have anyway if all the Lillian Russells and Pauline Fredericks in this Republic were down here for I don't like but one style of beauty and that's yours.
You should send me two letters the day you get this one for that last remark. Please get acquainted with Mrs. Klemm somehow so you can pay her a visit down here if it's only for twelve hours. I used all the stationery on this desk and I guess I'd better quit. Remember I'm the smiling kid when your letters come, so let ‘em come often.
Yours always, Harry