Letter published in Jan 15, 1919 Republican Journal Finme in Austria Dec. 7, 1918 Miss Sylvina SCHOEPPNER, Caldwell, Ohio, Rt 4. My Dear Cousin -- I will answer your most kind and welcome letter which I received a few days ago. Many thanks for the pictures, you look natural in it. I wish I could be with you once in a while. The American Marines left this morning. I don't know where they went to. This is a seaport town. We had rifle inspection this morning. That's all we do on Saturday. Oh, say, I had some beer this morning, it tasted pretty good for a change. Dear cousin, they have swell looking girls in this town. They dress neatly, just like in the U.S. The only thing I don't like about it here is everything is to high priced. Bread sells at 55 cents a loaf and $1 for a pie. What do you think about that kind of prices? I bought a piece of toilet soap, they only soaked me 65 cents for one piece. I hope we will get back home before long. I have got all kinds of money now. French, Italian, British and Austrian. The paper money is rotten, it tears too easy. I got the Republican and I read some of my letters, also Beda, Ernest and Henry RUPPLE. I am always glad to see it come. We are still having warm weather out here. I think we will have a pretty rough sea to cross going home. I am about 8000 miles away from home. Some distance don't you think? I think this letter will go out tomorrow morning. It's Sunday tomorrow and no place to go. I will tell you where we stopped at since we came to Italy. Villifranco was the first place, Villeggio, Custosa, Trevisco and Courmon, then we came down here to Finme. We are getting some tobacca issued to us today. Well two of the boys died that were in my squad. That's the way it goes. Bradford MILLER is nere now, he is my stand by. He is a pretty good fellow. We generally drink beer together. We will drink cider when we get back home. John MORRIS, Bradford and Joe CRUM are going to set a day to meet. Then we will have us one h--- of a time. But I don't know when that day will be. Bradford lives at East Union, and John MORRIS, at Harrietsville. So we only live about eight miles from each other. Yes, Sylvina, the slackers better not say too much when the soldier boys get back or else there will be h---- up in the kitchen, ha ha. I done a little detail work yesterday afternoon. I am getting lazier every day. I'm not quite as heavy now as I was before we went to the front. Some hard days we put in at the front. We hiked 31 miles in one stretch. Left valcasona at 3:30 p.m. and arrived at the stopping place at 4:30 a.m., walked all night. Our packs weight about 86 pounds. So you might know we were pretty tired. I guess or hardest days are over now, and I surely am glad of it. Tomorrow it will be six months since we left the states. We were six weeks in France, then we came to Itay. I have done more writing in the last few days than in a month before. That's about the only pastime we got. Some of the boys have got their Christmas packages. I don't think we will have as good a time this year as we did last year. I was glad to hear that you had a good time at Nau's. Yes, I remember the time we had at Weber's last year. I wouldn't hardly know what a sausage tasted like. I might have seen the King of Italy's son the time we had the review at Villtfrance. He had all of the big men with him. I got fifteen letters the other day. We get up at 6:30 and go to bed at 9 o'clock. We have a kind of a hard bed, it's on the floor. We are staying in a school house. We have a stove and lights. We didn't need any fire the last few days, it's just like summer. I am glad to hear that your mother is well again. Marie said her mother was sick. You surely have a lot of sickness out there. There isn't very much sickness here. We had a few cases of flu in our company while we were at Cormons. I surely would like to help husk corn when you, Milda and Ida helped. I bet you made the ears fly. So you were quarantined for while. Well, I know what it's like to be penned up. At Treviso we couldn't get out at all. They had a stone wall around the camp. We had an air raid there one night. Old Cherry came over four times. I was on guard that night. They had three thousand big machine guns on the front when they started the drive. Our old barrack was shaking that night. It was just one steady roar. I will tell you more about it when I see you, it's too much to write. Well, dear cousin, I guess you are getting tired of reading my scribbling, so I will close with love and best wishes, to you all. As ever your cousin, Pvt. Otto J. MILLER Co. L, 332 Inft, A.P.O. 901C Via New York If you would like a photocopy of an article, please contact me. This and other Ohio newspaper transcriptions can be found on my website. Joyce Fullen Grove City OH http://www.fullenfamily.com/Newspapers/ohio__newspapers.htm