This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: McAndrew, Gillespie, Corey Classification: Military Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/AQB.2ACI/257 Message Board Post: Plattsmouth Journal, Monday, March 18, 1918 A LETTER FROM FRANCE. >From Thursday’s Daily. Somewhere in France. February 15th, 1918 Mr. Con GILLESPIE, Plattsmouth, Nebr., U.S.A. Dear Sir: Just a few lines to let you know I am well and feeling fine, able to eat all I get, and enjoy every bit of it. Oh, Con, I miss our 9:00 P.M. oyster stew. Con, after I get away from France, if I live through it, I will go and stay at the Perkins House all the time. This was a very cold winter here. We did not have any snow, but we had lots of frost and rain. It freezes for two or three days and then turns in warm and rains for a day or two, which makes it very disagreeable on foot and in fact every way. The country is divided up in small fields as it is in Ireland, surrounded by a sod fence or embankment and a very thick growth or briars and wine bushes growing on all of them and in addition to the briars and wine bushes they have oak trees planted about two rods apart and they have chopped the trees about ten feet from the ground some years ago, and the people keep chopping the limbs and branches off the trees and also chop the briars and wine bushes down from these sod fences and tie the same up in bundles like you would oats and stack them up and use the same for firewood. The farmers do all their plowing with oxen. They save all the farm yard manure and have it out of the fields just before they plow it up. The farmers till the land a good deal on the same principle that the people do in Ireland. Their houses are all rock and cement, some thatch roofs and some tile roofs. Address my mail to MICHAEL MC ANDREW, Co. E, 17th Regt. Engrs. Ry., U.S.A. Expeditionary Forces in France. I will close for this time with best wishes to you and Mr. and Mrs. John COREY and all the boys. I remain, as ever, yours truly, MICHAEL MC ANDREW. O.K. T.E. SAUVENE, 1st Lieut.