The Newtown bee., 1901-01-11
ANEWTOWN BOY IN CHINA.

Pekin, China, September II, 1900.
 Dear Father: I received your kind
 and welcome letter this morning and
 was very glad to hear from you, that
 you are all enjoying the best of health.
 have not been very we'll the last week
 for have been ill and have been in the hospital for Overa week. l am a
 good deal bettef now. My whole com- pany has had the same complaint on account of not being used to the water and the hardships we went through.
 We left Manila the 14th and sailed
 the 18th of June on the boat, "FiSher,' with one battalion of the l4th Infan- try. We arrived in Nagsaki, Japan, the 18th of July and we remained there two days to take on coal. We arrived in Taku, China, the 9th of August. When we were two days out of Nagsaki our boat took fire down in the coal bin. We had to fight for two days and two nights to put out the fire.
 We managed to keep the fire low so it did not do much damage. All we had to eat was salmon, tomatoes, hardtack and smutty coffee. There were eight men to one can of tomatoes and one can of salmon, so we were pretty near ly starved. When we reached Taku we had to work night and day for three days to get our. boat unloaded so we could make our general draw rations. We put our parcels on to flat cars and went to Tientsin, the distance of B miles. The land lay like rolling prairie. There we camp ed for the night and unloaded the next morning. We started out about o'clock. We marched behind the En- glish and Japs. They took a small artillery few miles out and in the fight good many Japs were killed and some wounded, and the next morning we moved to the left of them, march ing on to Tientsin. There were four big artillery forts there. We went into action, charging in as close as we could get, and the Boxers infantry and cavalry charged towards us. We got our pieces in action and all that saved us was the cannOneer of my piece. He was told to cut a fuse for two seconds and he cut it for one, and we gave them number of shells and drove them back, so that we could get a good view of them, and we cut them all to pieces. We silenced two of the forts after two hours firing. Then we were in front of the English and Japs and we got off a little to the right O1 the two other forts and Silenced them. The English and Japs made mistake. They commenced to give us their fire and killed few of our men with theil shells. We ran up our flag so that they could see who we were. The wounded were of the infantry, except one man that was shot. We had one man slightly wounded in the leg. had two bullet holes in my clothing
 one through the top of my hat and one through my coat sleeve. We had nc water nor any food for day and { half, for our captain would not let us get anything to eat. We had tt cross sandy country. We could not get anything to drink where we hat
 the scrap in a big corn and cane field
 We went from there to Pekin. Befor,
 we got there we had another scrap Our supply train ran short of rations
 so we. could not get anything to ca except one slice of bacon, two hard , Jacks for days rations Some day
 we could not get that. When we go
 into camp nights we had to work til II or 12 o'clock and then had to star out at or o'clock and march all day The heat was severe. It was 9S in tn shade, and there was a string of sol 5 diers, English, JapS and Russians
 Some of them blew out their brains t
 get out of their misery, and if ma fell out he got a court-martial. w f arrived in Pekin on the morning (
 the l4th. We blew open two gate and had one man killed, and whereve e you turned you could see nothing bu