Tuesday Morn.
Dear Folks,
Before I get through this paper will likely be black because my hands & clothes are just covered with mud but you’ll have to overlook it. I have been digging a fox hole this morning and since I am just dripping wet with sweat the dirt has made a coat of mud all over me.
We got up at 3:15 yesterday, ate breakfast, rode out here (about 30m miles), and put up our tents in time to start to work at 7:30. Then we put in a full day’s work and were ready to quite when night came.
This morning we got up at about 5:30, ate breakfast and started digging out fox holes (or more nearly correct, slit trenched) beside our tents. The ground is real hard clay and I think they are going to give us till noon to finish them. But I have mine dug about an hour ahead of time so I thought this would be as good a chance as any to let you hear from me. Of course, if they knew I wasn't digging they would find something else for me to do.
I think another reason they are giving us a good bit of time for this is that they know we have an all night problem and if they make us work too hard now it’s hard to tell what shape we would be in by tomorrow morning.
We’ll run some kind of problems this afternoon and then from 8:00 tonight till 6 in the morning we’ll be out. Then instead of getting all day off to make up for an all-night problem as we used to, we’ll get half a day off. This means only 5 or 6 hrs sleep to make up for 24 hours of work. These people really believe in working us now. They only intend to give us half as much time off in the day time as we spend at night and this week we have two four-hour night problems (Wed & Fri nights) with no time at all off the next day. I think they want to make us glad to get away from here when it comes time to go over (which rumor has it may not be too far off).
I got my watch wrapped up Sunday evening and gave it to the mail clerk who is supposed to send it out today. Don’t forget what I said about seeing about swapping it.
Well take care of yourselves. I hope to hear from you one of these days.
Love,
Donald
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