July 17, 1916
Barriefield Camp,

Dear Bro:

As it is quite awhile since I wrote home I will scratch you a few lines tonight. Things are going about as usual in the camp, the weather is usually fine but last night we had a big rain, it poured for about two hours and a half just as hard as it could pour, but to-night you would never know it had rained. I was on guard last night but as luck would have it, I didn't have to go on duty while it was raining. It takes about all the men that there is available in one company for guards each day, as there are over forty in the clink and I guess as many more in quarantine for measles and etc. After every pay day there is a bunch take a few days french leave, when there (sic) money is all gone they come back and go in the clink for a few days. Last week Ben K. and five or six more beat it. They boarded a freight train and went to Belleville, they stayed there a couple of days and then took another freight to Smiths Falls. They caught them there and brought them back to camp.

How are you getting along with the haying? I wish I was there to help you for awhile. I might be able to go home for a while if some of you would come up or write to Col. Bedell saying that you really needed me. They are more careful about giving furloughs than they were in the spring as a lot of the fellows just try to get them to have a good time. They said a couple of weeks ago that they weren't going to give any more, but they are still giving them. They say they won't give any furloughs after the first of Aug. I won't be able to get home until after the 1st of Aug. unless I get a furlough as they are not going to give any more week end passes this month. The way things are going here now it looks to me as though this Battalion will be leaving Canada some time in September. It seems to be quite a mystery where they will go, some say we are going to England and others say we are going to Bermuda.

They are getting things fixed up pretty good here now, they serve our meals to us on a table, the men taking turns as waiter. I am one of the waiters for to morrow. They also have shower baths. We get better water to drink than we had at first as we found a spring down in the woods, it is about a half a mile from Camp but it is first class water when you get it.

I suppose you are milking as many cows as ever. You will have your hands full during haying and harvest if you are.

They give us some work to do here that I can't see much sense in the way they do it. Today they took about a hundred men up to head quarters to fix a road across a field. If they had of taken a couple of men and a team of horses & a scraper they could have done as much in a half a day.

If Dad would come up some day you would stand a better chance of getting me home, as they don't know wether (sic) what comes to them in letters is the truth or just a bluff that some one has put up to get a fellow off to have a month's good time. He could come up on that 12.35 train from Prescott and get back again the next morning about two o'clock so he would only miss one night at home for milking. I suppose he tries to be there as often as possible for that.

Well I guess that is enough trash for this time so I will close hoping you are all well
I remain
Your loving Bro
Jim