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Red Cross Stn. No. 3
Boulogne, France
May 3, 1915
Mr. Charles Milburn
23 ½ College Street E.
Arkham, Massachusetts,
United States of America
Dear Charles,
My first letter from France is to you. I have been here only two weeks, but it seems like forever. I spent the entire first week trying not to faint or vomit, and I was afraid to sleep because of the nightmares. By the second week I was all right, and now I’m completely hardened, on the surface at least.
My job is ferrying casualties from the trains that bring them from the front to the hospitals here. They don’t send women drivers to the front. That bothered me at first, but now I’m just as happy it is so. It may sound heartless, but by the time they arrive here, the worst cases have died; the ones that are left are bad enough.
On the days I’m not on duty, I explore the town with some of the others – the original French town nearby, I mean, not the new one of hastily-constructed huts, sheds and tents where we live and work. Boulogne itself is kind of a dull little place, but the countryside beyond is pretty, with its villages and fields. Sometimes we go on picnics, and there are lots of opportunities for me to practice my limited French. But it’s not exactly a holiday.
I share a hut with five other women – an English bohemian, a Canadian from Toronto disconsolate over a broken engagement, a would-be Communist from Minnesota and a pair of earnest Australians. They have taken some getting used to, but I certainly wouldn’t have met people like them in Arkham! Each has her own reasons for being here – to find adventure, to escape a dull existence, an oppressive family, an unwanted suitor. Oh, Romance! That seems to be behind so many of the reasons – too much, too little, the wrong kind.
Enough. I can feel a Complaint coming on, and I don’t want to burden you with it. I’m sure this will be a Good Experience for me.
But I do miss you.
Alma.
I missed her too, more than I ever admitted in my letters to her. And I was a faithful correspondent. I wrote to her about my adventures with the Quarrington collection and about the changeless changes of Arkham. She wrote to me about the people and situations she encountered in her difficult and demanding work. I think perhaps it was in those letters that she began to find her future career. But here I excerpt only those that bear on Herbert West.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 15