Chapter XXI: Section 60: A Letter From Salonika

DEAR ED:

I have just returned here from the front, and learned from your letter that you are in France. You don’t know how glad I was to hear from you. My prompt reply will bear me out, for you know I am not much of a hand at writing letters. Let me commence by saying that if they ever want you to come down here, don’t you do it, for, if there is one place that the Lord forgot to fix up just enough to be decent it’s this Bulgarian front, and, from what I have seen, all the Balkan States are no better.

Once in a while we get some papers which show pictures of the hardships the British Tommies are enduring with artillery, etc., in the Flanders mud. If they have anything on us they must surely be in a bad way, because ninety-nine per cent of our front is mud. The remainder is—also mud. They have a roadway here and there at least. We never see what one would call a clearly defined path. It’s just one big field of mud.

The Monastir road is the main artery of travel out toward our front, and this has been so cut up by the never-ending traffic and through lack of other parallel roads that it is about as bad as you can imagine it. At the end of the road (this end) conditions are barely tolerable.

The town Salonika itself is located on the sea in a sort of hollow, and around us like sentinels are the hills, which guard every approach to the city proper for miles. Members high on the staff say the city could never be taken from the land side, and from the supplies stored here I am sure they believe this to be a fact. I do not think it will be long before we will come in for our share of attention in the columns of the newspapers, for we have been expecting the development of military activity for some little time past.

The sanitary conditions are much improved here and everything is done to counteract disease. All kinds of improvements have been made, but the poor devils at the front are the ones that come in for their share. Men contract diseases here unknown to medical science, besides those that are known. Nearly everything reeks with malaria. I have taken enough quinine to run a drug store in the States six months, and while I, like many others, pride myself on the good fortune we are having, I am sure, in the days to come, we will see the effects which always follow.

No doubt you are familiar with the Venizelos régime. I see him about quite often. The men that are with him are all bright, smart, up-to-date fellows, and with the Allies hammer and tongs, and they are far more loyal to Greece than the King’s party, who follow the instructions of Kaiser Bill.

Write me a long letter, for it helps a great deal in such a place as this, and if you ever get some American newspapers you might send them on when you are through with them. Keep in touch with me, but don’t ever think of coming here unless they tie you hand and foot and send you.

Take good care of yourself and hand those wooden-headed Germans some hot ones.

Your pal,

JOE.