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February 10, 1973.

Dear Alice:

[[marginalia]] ^[[omit]] [[image - bracket indicating first paragraph]] [[/marginalia]] If my memories of 1917 seem incredibly detailed, it is because I kept a diary covering most of that year.  Having read Rousseau, I was moved to emulate him and wrote a candid, unvarnished account of my doings.  I let it lapse after I got to France, not because I was behaving more badly but because I did not want to carry the diary around.  A few years later I thought it prudent to burn it, but before doing so I transcribed a good many notes.  It is just as well that neither Florence nor Helen saw that diary, although the events it recorded had taken place long before I met either of them.  I never pretended to either of them that my early life had been one of unblemished chastity.  But it was just as well not to leave a detailed record lying around as a constant reminder to them.

When I left Fort Oglethorpe in August of 1917 I had a ten-day leave.  I needed time to raise some money, to buy uniforms and equipment.  As an officer I would no longer be fed and clothed at government expense, and I could not wear the army issue clothes I had drawn from the quartermaster.  I was going to have travel expense, and although I should eventually be reimbursed for that I did not know how long it would take.  So I went to Lit Pardue, lawyer and banker at Ashland City and asked him for a loan of $400.  I had no collateral to secure the loan.  I had been carrying $2000 of insurance with the Penn Mutual, just to provide for payment of my school debt in case of untimely death.  But the insurance company on learning of my enlistment had demanded an extra premium of $200 annually to cover war risk.  I did not have the $200, so I had let the policy lapse. 

Mr. Pardue told me that his bank could not make such a speculative loan, but that he would arrange for me to get the money from a local business man, Hugh Dozier.  So I gave Dozier a note for $400, at 8 per cent interst as usual.  Pardue and two other substantial citizens of Ashland City endorsed my note as sureties.  I cannot now remember who the other two were, but Lit Pardue was always my friend.  I still have a letter he wrote me while I was in France.  He later became managing editor of the Nashville Tennesseean.  

So now I owed a total of $700, including the old school debt that had been transferred to Carthage.  But the base pay of a second lieutenant was $1700 annually, more than twice what I had been earning as a