Encoded for for the Veterans History Project, January 30, 2017.
All letters in the McNutt collection were digitized.
The following letters were transcribed from the handwritten originals by the donor. No alterations to this transcription has been made, although spelling errors are indicated with [sic]. Any special emphasis (i.e. underlining) is presented *between asterisks*.
[Written in top right corner of page] Here is a little souvenir from France it is equivalent to ten cents in U.S. Money.
I got your letter yesterday and sure did enjoy it. You certainly do write good letters and get better all the time. You don't don't know how glad I am to get them and how they cheer me up and make me forget my troubles which are many. Myrtle my little girl I just cant get over being
disappointed because I won't get to see you. I would love so much to see you once more anyway and now maybe I won't have a chance. Many times when I was going through hardships I would cheer myself up by thinking and looking forward to this glad day when I would get to go home and see them all and be with you and now, well, my dreams were just dreams not to come true as most of mine are. When we get all repaired this time we will just go over and back, over and back and life at sea is very, very hard and it may be a long time before we got another furlough. My! I can't tell you Myrtle oh! How miserable I am tonight. With the dissappointment [sic.] of you not being able to come was enough but then yesterday I put in my request for leave and ask [sic.] for seven days and it was approved today and handed over to me and as
the ship hasn't been able to get those forms that will enable us to get reduced rates on railroads, they sent me to a place here in Norfolk to get one and I went over and failed to get one so in place of my being far on my way home-ward bound I am sitting on this old tub trying to write. I didn't have money enough to pay full fare so am out of luck, but the pay master is going over to the Navy yards
in the morning and try to get some of them but at that it will cause me to loose [sic.] almost two days and that is a lot. You see I am waiting on a court martial and all my pay has been held up for over a month, but if I had of known before hand that I wouldn't have gotten the form I could have gotten enough money to get home. But you see I didn't know. Well, I guess you are tired of listening
to my troubles so I will pipe down.
Don't worry, Myrtle, about writing to the P.M. N. Y. for I don't think there is much danger of causing me any trouble on this ship altho it might but on a battle ship it would be almost sure to. You know when we were in Philla. You wrote to the P.M. Well the card was sent on to this ship and if it had been a battle ship I would have gotten about two months pay taken away from me and twenty days in the brig (jail) on bread and water but the boobs on this ship didn't know it was against regulations. You can always write and ask the trouble but don't mention the port the ship is in. Even if it does cause me any trouble don't worry a minute over it because you didn't know and I should have told you before about it.
Yes, all the fellows in that picture were fireman except one, and he was a dizzy cook. They weren't good at all. Some time soon I am going to have some pictures made in dress blues nice size picture you know and some post cards in whites and will send you one of each if you want them. I haven't had a decent picture made yet in the uniform and I think the sailors uniforms look so horribly bad. Now
don't you think so too? I don't see why we couldn't have a military uniform like the soldiers and Marines. Our uniforms are the same as Columbus wore hundreds of hears ago.
From what the sailors over here that has come back from their leave things must have changed a lot since I left home. All the fellows around the corner you used to hang out with are gone and everything is dead and not what they used to be. It's like the song,
"The old grey mare is not not what she used to be". I guess if this war lasts a couple more years this country will show the effects of the war awfully much and take years to build it back. Well we must do the best we can and smile. That is the way I have been trying to do when trouble comes along (which is most all the time.) I try to smile but it is awfully hard to do. Maybe there is a day coming some day that we can all go home and be like it was long ago in the happy days we didn't know how to appreciate.
My Mind is all in a twist and jumping cage and I can't think when I want to write so will when I get home if I get there. I think maybe I will be able to get away tomorrow. Yes I would be surprised very much to see you come walking in while I am at home but my! It would be a glad, glad surprise for me and I am afraid
My Mind is all in a twist and jumping cage and I can't think when I want to write so will when I get home if I get there. I think maybe I will be able to get away tomorrow. Yes I would be surprised very much to see you come walking in while I am at home but my! It would be a glad, glad surprise for me and I am afraid you would suffer from some fractured bones when I got thought showing you how glad I was to see you. You sure would get one good squeezing in your life and one you would long remember, but that is too good a thing to come true at least for me. It can be only a sweet dream.
Give my love to C. Vola.
P. S. I didn't realize I was writing such a grave yard letter until I read it over. But will try to write a more cheerful one with time. It seems I just cant write a decent letter any more no matter how hard I try . H.
With a million bushels of love,