Earl Litton Writes Home from Egypt - 1916

LITTON

Posted By: Volunteer
Date: 8/12/2006 at 10:05:08

Lockridge Herald; Lockridge, Jefferson Co, IA; Friday, February 4, 1916

JEFFERSON CO. BOY WRITES FROM EGYPT

Earl Litton, the twenty-three year old son of Mrs. Ella Litton of Glasgow is now in the British Army Commissionary Department in Egypt. He was at home about a year ago after which he went to the Pacific coast and letr [sic] to Canada where he enlisted. The following interesting letter has just been received by his mother:

Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 10, 1915.
Deam Mama and All:-

Just a line to say that I am well and hope you are the same. I have been so busy that I could not find time to write sooner but hope that you have received the letters I have written and that you have not worried about me. Don't worry as I am all right and worry would do no good anyway.

Will tell you of a few of my experiences up to the present time, although I would not be allowed to tell near all of them. Here is one that made some of us think at the time, but I do not think it would keep me awake now. Two days after we passed Gibraltar, we came near where a troop ship was sunk the day before. There was a shout from some of the boys and I rushed up to the top deck-by the way we were playing cards below- and the ship passed through a lot of wreckage and every once in awhile we would pass the body of a dead soldier. Every one that we saw was floating face downward and they all had on their life belts and water bottles. Poor devils, they found a place where they will not need a water bottle. I counted seven men and then went below; I had seen enough. But some of the boys counted as many as a hundred.

When we came to Malta for a...[cannot read a line]... day it was on Sunday. The kids came around us in the little condolas such as you8 have seen in pictures of Venice. They came to dive for money. We would throw a penny or six pence overboard and I never saw one that they did not get. It was fun to see a half dozen of them going in the water after the one piece and the one who found it would scramble back in his boat and take the coin from between his toes.

We have seen lots of country and are having a rest here and a well deserved one too. Was out to see the Pyramids and we climbed the highest one. It was not quite a fourth of a mile high but a man looks awful small at the top. You can go out there from here on a street car for five cents, a distance of about fourteen miles. Very cheap, don't you think. My I wish you could see this place; a modern city, many ways and in others just as it was one thousand years ago. The natives all go about in dresses, both men and women with their faces all covered up. About the only way you can tell for sure whether you are meeting a man or woman is to look at their ankles and the married dames wear a thing that looks like a long thimble on their rosers [?]. That is the way we told the difference at first but it soon gets easy.

I bought some trinkets here but do not know if I shall ever get home with them. If I thought the duty would not be too high I would send a few things home.

We did not have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, did you? Did not think about it being Thanksgiving until the first of December.

Well, this is the paper I have so must bring this to a close. Write often to the same address, but do not expect too many letters from me as I do not have much time to write. Good by. EARL.

The envelope bears the following statement: Correspondence in this envelope need not be censored Regimentally. The contents are liable to examination of the Base. The following certificate must be signed by the writer: I certify on my honor that the contents of this envelope refer to nothing but private family matters.

E.B. LITTON.
Attest: G.C. Holland, Major.