"Can you imagine how it would be if you went out to your barn and sat there all the evening without your coat or hat on and then went to bed out there, got up in the morning, went outdoors to the tub where the water is like ice and washed, then went back into the barn--no fire to warm yourself by. I started out for drill this morning a-shivering and shaking so I couldn't stand still, and the worst of it is we haven't any blouses [coats], and they won't let us wear anything over the O.D. shirts. That is the regular army shirts. We can put all we can get or want under them but nothing over them, not for drill.

"Right near where we form our company there is a mud hole, and this morning it was froze over and the fog was blowing in from the ocean and the air went right through me. I don't see what else they can do only go south. We'll freeze here. The barracks is only a shell. It isn't sealed up only like a barn, and we can go outdoors and walk right up under part of it. So there is the whole story."