Somewhere in England, Oct. 8^th.

Dear Mother: – Well here I am safely across the ocean. We had a real good trip although the water was rather rough at times. I thought I would be about the first one to get sea-sick, but I did not get sick, felt fine all the time. It certainly seems funny to think that I am here. Things are so different from back in the states. Things are a lot higher in price too. Can hardly get cigarettes and things like that.

We came out to camp in a train and say the trains are the funniest things you ever saw. The cars are little short things divided into sections. The box cars look like farm wagons. The wheels all have spokes in them and they go rattling along over the tract like some little express wagon. You never see any real big buildings here, are all one and two stories, and they have about two hundred chimneys on each one. They certainly look queer to us fellows that are used to the states.

It’s the hardest thing to understand them fellows. They talk so fast and funny but we can make it out though. It will be a lot worse when we get to France where they talk a different language altogether. Well, I guess we will have to get along as best we can and what we can’t understand won’t hurt us.

You can’t write a whole lot as it is all censored and what they don’t want they cross out. I’ll close for this time and write a little later from France.

With love from, Donald C. Hogenson, Battery E – 125 F. A.

Editor’s Note: We do not have a photograph of Donald C. Hogenson.