London Colney
February 20, 1918
Dear Jimmy:
I sent you today a stream lined cap. Just like the one we wear. I hope you receive it and that it will fit you. The bronze badge on it is not much good, but it is the best I could get in London. When I come back I will give you mine, it is a good stamping. You can unfold the cap into a sort of flying helmet, but it is rather bum makeshift as such. You wear the cap with equal bow and stern trim, and listed to the port until it almost touches your ear. The part in your hair just comes under the starboard edge. Wear it with the split fold down the top either closed or opened, to suit your taste. Do not tip it to the girls, merely salute and “carry on.”
I suppose by the time I get home you will be a regular boy. I would like to take you for a ride in one of the scout machines. You would be tickled at the way they can dart about and dive and climb, and you get such a wonderful view of the earth away down below the clouds. They are lovely things in the air, but oh, my, you do have to watch your steps when you put them on the ground.
Well Jimmy the only experience you will have in this war will be playing with the people who have been in it and listening to their tales. But don’t worry old boy you will have as big a job and as tough a time in the struggle that will follow. If America comes through, as she is sure to do, this will be the last of national wars. What you have go to prepare for is the fight that the intelligent and hard working people will have to wage against the ignorant and lazy ones, so as to make them do their bidding. You want to get all the education and training you can, just as soon as you can, and you will find the game very thrilling and interesting.
Give my best love to your Mother and Father, tell her I enjoy her letters very much, and that that wish that I get to France and help finish the job, and then come home is “the stuff to gee the troops.”
Well Jimmy be good and prosper. I will see you in a couple of years.
Always,
Uncle Parr
Parr evidently had with him at least one sheet of letterhead stationery from his father’s Oakland Manufacturing Company.