OCTOBER 12,1944
Thursday Eve
FRANCE
 
Dear Mother and Dad,
         I broke my fountain pen the other day - so I'll have to try to buy one from the PX - if we ever get a PX here. Pens are rare items.
         It's raining today. It rained yesterday - and the day before that- and the day before that - in fact it has been raining every day for a considerable time. You adapt yourself to it after awhile and don't mind it. You have to make the greatest possible use of the rare times when it isn't raining to dry things out. The fact that I'm in headquarters makes things easier for me. We have a room in a village schoolhouse - and I'm writing pretty comfortable tight now.
         The constant rain makes the country very green, and when the sun does come out, it is certainly beautiful. I wish Dad could have been here at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. I was in one of those "upland valleys" that I had heard about but never seen. It was the most beautiful farm scenes I had ever seen. There were rolling stretches of smooth, unbroken green; with contrasting fields of freshly ploughed ground. The neighboring ridge lines were forested and the valley floor had numerous small groves of trees. The road, with its gentle curves looked as though it had been drawn in by an artist, and connected a couple of small villages each marked by a church steeple.
         Farming is different than in Italy. It's true that France is a country of independent land owners. In Italy, most of the land that was worth having, and a lot that wasn't was owned by large land holders. The grain fields, for instance, were worked by gangs, with an overseer on a horse presiding. Here you see the individual proprietors out ploughing.
         I find that I'll have to end this here - the light is gone.
         Ed