Sincerely, Joel C. Swisher

Dear Folks,

Have been intending to write you for some time. I had just about started when they fetched me here and for the last two weeks I haven’t done anything but take life easy. I guess I had as near a perfect case of mumps as is possible. For the first week, I certainly was a handsome young man. I know you would not have recognized me.

Last week when your package arrived, I started to get better quite suddenly. You surely sent me a lot of good eating. It arrived in good shape and at a time when it was doubly appreciated. When I tasted that candy it made me think I was back home again and had stopped in to visit you for an evening. And those socks, believe me, they are the warmest foot covering I have seen for some time. I suppose all I can is to say thank you, altho that seems to rather poorly express what I want to say. It must have cost you a bit for postage.

This is a pretty good place to spend the time when you are sick. It is base hospital #17.  Most of the doctors and nurses come from Detroit, Mich. and I understand they were in the Harper Unit. The ward I am in is a long wooden barracks and is better built than ordinary barracks. It holds 32 beds and has a kitchen and washroom at one end. We have regular hospital cots, enameled, with springs and mattresses, which are quite a change for soldiers. We get fed very well in here. I understand that the government gives a few cents extra allowance for food while in the hospital and the Red Cross also contributes something.

The German soldiers and people don’t believe there are any American soldiers in France and they are led to believe that no one can come over on account of the U boats. Some recently captured German soldiers came thru this town. They still had mud of the trenches on them. When they saw an American soldier, they said, “Not an American, English man in American clothes.” When they were shown the U.S. stamped on his rifle they were terribly shocked.

We have been having such nice weather recently that we thought spring must be here, but this morning, we woke up to find a couple of inches of snow and sleet on the ground. I guess winter will be with us for a few weeks yet.

The Red Cross has been very good to me. Besides getting that package with the sweater I also got a Christmas box from the Lancaster Co.  I don’t know whether the Fulton Branch had a hand in sending that or not, but if it did, it surely has my thanks.

At least I can say I have heard the guns. About 3 weeks ago we could hear from a hilltop back of our camp. It was rather indistinct but we could make out what it was. Sounded like very distant thunder.

I have met but one fellow that I knew in civilian life but have made a lot of new friends and have met fellows from all over the U.S. Hearing them talk about their different states makes me want to see more of the U.S. when I get back than I have seen heretofore.

Here’s wishing you are getting thru the winter all right. Again, please accept my humble thanks for that package, for which I am surely many times obliged.

Lovingly,
Joel

P.S. Mar. 6. Got out of hospital and am O.K. Just got your letter of Jan. 15 for which I  surely am much obliged. Hope you will pardon for answering two letters with one.

[Editor’s (Helen Swisher Davenport) note: Joel does not tell in his letter how terribly ill he had been. He was so sick one night the doctors and nurses did not believe he would live. He must have run an extremely high fever. They placed him in a room with at least 50 other men for the night and went about nursing the other sick soldiers whom they thought would make it. When Joel awoke the next morning, he was the only man alive in the room! The nurses were astonished when they found him alive! They had placed all the men they had considered “hopeless” in that room to let them die. They did not have the time or people to care for them all. But “I fooled them!” he told us in later years. His body and will power fought back and he survived!]