3. A Friend from India in Distress,
January 30, 1917 (1918)
....As my last letters have indicated I was on detached service for extending over the rush of Christmas mails and was returned to duty with my company only a week ago. I found John had already returned and it was good to see and be with him again. As you probably do not know yet, Hubert is with us no more. It was a blow to both John and I when he went to the hospital and an unspeakably greater one when John told me he was in a large base hospital in one of the ports of France under guard with no one allowed within ten paces of him, segregated as a "leper." Can you imagine it Giger, our old school chum and college pal, a leper? It seems inconceivable to me where he could have contracted it in this country. However he says he is awaiting the confirmation of the diagnosis of military doctors by specialists before being sent back to the U.S. to be sentenced to some asylum. I never knew of any such thing in the family but he says that the doctors say he probably carried the disease in some part of his body, and that it emerged from its latent state after the excessive muscular activity that was encountered in his training; will let you know if we hear anything further . . .
Eugene