[Received December 1, 1917]
Camp Harrowby, Grantham, Eng.
November 16, 1917
Dear Father:
A letter from Mother of Oct. 3, one from Helen forwarded Oct. 17, and yours from Atlantic City Oct. 24, were received today. All thoroughly enjoyed. I was surprised to see the London address and then read inside that your last letter from me was the one written on shipboard. I sent a cablegram and a postal from Oxford and assume that you must have received one of them.
I am delighted to know that you all have been enjoying a trip to Atlantic City, and lobster suppers. Also glad to hear about Mary’s success with the Red Cross classes and Jimmie’s success at housekeeping at 1626.
In answer to your questions. I get paid $100 a month (beginning last Sept. 1) and get along very well but do not save on it. I appreciate your suggestion of a draft very much. I will not get commissioned until perhaps next March. English weather is no good for many minutes (averaging) per day flying and especially in winter time.
Today we studied German machine guns. They have a collection of captured guns here. Our guns are better than the Boche’s, strange as it may seem. This afternoon we had our final examinations. It was practical work on stoppages and done against time. I did not do very well. Captain Hibbard gave us a fine lecture on the history and characteristics of machine guns and then a little farewell salvo.
I had my uniform tried on just before supper. I think it is going to be very fine. Expect to get it tomorrow. Had my hair cut. The camp barber made a good job of it and charged the regular English price of 4 pence ($0.08). How is that for cheap labor.
Lovingly,
Parr
Helen was Mrs. Sydney Green (née Helen Hamilton Leiper Henderson), from a prominent family in Cumberland, Maryland. She had gone to school in Baltimore before attending Bryn Mawr, from which she graduated in 1911 with a degree in history, economics, and politics.130 In April 1917 she married Sydney M. Green, Jr., a merchant from Petersburg, Virginia.131
Parr’s sister Mary Bowen Hooper (“Mary B”) attended Girl’s Latin School in Baltimore. She then trained at the Union Protestant Infirmary (later renamed Union Memorial Hospital) Training School for Nurses in Baltimore, receiving her degree in 1913.132 Jimmie is Parr’s nephew, Margaret’s son, James Russell McQueen, Jr., born March 7, 1917. 1626 was the Bolton Street, Baltimore, address of the Hoopers.
Pasted into Parr’s “R.F.C. Training Transfer Card” booklet is a half page titled “Machine Gun Training Centre” signed by (Captain) S. L. Hibbard. This was Stephen Leslie Hibbard. About a year younger than Parr, he had attended Marlborough College and then joined the infantry in 1914. He was for a time in the Royal Fusiliers before moving in 1916 to the Machine Gun Corps where he became initially an assistant instructor and then, in early 1918, an instructor.133