The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-27
WOUNDED FRENCH SOLDIER TELLSOF
 HIS EXPERIENCE
Lay Wounded for 36 Hours in Mud and Rain While Bullets Whistled
 Over Him

Paris, October 26.-(COrreSpondence of The Associated Press.)-These extracts from the letter of an unnamed French soldier to his father in Paris are pub ilshed in The Figaro:
 ''Wounded in the stomach about 6 o'clock in the morning, I am left in the rain and in mud so deep that I am obliged to lean on my elbows to keep my head out of it.
 "The battle continues to rage. I am between the two camps, and, without oxaggeration, more than 150.00o bullets pass over me. Some struck at my sides and I expect each moment to receive one which will cut short the spectacle. [ remain thus helpless from in the morn- ing until the next afternoon and the rain does not stop. It. is then that appreciate the need of an umbrella, I who never carried one. I unbutton my coat, but am unable to determine the gravity of my wound for there is as much mud as blood.
 Toward ? o'clock there is a lull in the firing. 1 await the stretcher bearers, but like Sister Anne, they do not come. The hours seem atrociously long. although no longer pay any attention to the rain, which continues. Finally towards o'clock in the afternoon l see coming in place of the looked for stretcher bearers-the Ger mans.
 Germans Arrive
 This time it is for good,'' I say to myself q am done for. blow from q rifle butt or a thrust of the boyonet and they would finish me A last thought of my family and I try to take my own rife and end it. It is useless. The gun is no more than a lump of mud, of sticky clay.
 There are five long minutes during which I exist with a calmness that sur prises me. A German asks me in French, How are you?'
 q showed him the place where I am wounded.
 Reassure yourself he says. that will perhaps amount to nothing. In any case, you will get we'll
 T learn that they are from Lorraine, which is lucky. They are clad in gray, which makes them almost invisible in war. I speak of this to them. They answer:
 " Indeed. with your red trousers we can see you long distance. You make superb targets
 'The Germans went on their way prom ising to return to look for me as well as others who like myself. lay on the battlefield l take hope. It seems good to be alive, although I am in a sorry plight.
 'The hours pass; night arrives. It still rains Day breaks. No one; neither stretcher bearer nor my Lorraines of the day before. It Is not until 1 o'clock in the afternoon of the second day that tiie Germans come back I have passed S4 hours in reflection in the rain, with wound which caused me much suffer- ing.
 The Germans put me on canvass with two pieces of wood at either end They carry me to hamlet about a kilometer and a half distant. and stretch me out there in the open air, still in the rain but on firmer ground. Then they go back to search for others They bring hack thus 700 or 800 wounded, of whom 40O are French.
 I am soaked. I am famished I munch with joy a bit of army biscuit which I find delicious. Upon my urgent entreaty z. German consents to give me a glass of wine from his flask, which he has just filled. l thank him. That warns Tie. The German Is going away, when