The Alaska citizen., 1915-04-12
ALASKAN IN FRENCH ARMY
 EXPLAINS WAR
SOUROOUGA THINKS THE ALLIES ARE CERTAIN TO WIN
 THE CONFLICT.

From an Alaska sourdough. who
 went from Nome to join the French
 army and is now serving under the ! French Colors in AlsaCe. has been 1 received an interesting letter III 1 Fairbanks. The person receiving the l letter objects to personal names be | ing used. but has allowed The Citi- zen to print the major part of the l letter.
 | The letter is dated March l, but is without any mention of towns, all allusions to definite places hay ing been marked with just a straight line. It is explained, however, in the body of the letter that the writer is in AlsaCe. which is on the German frontier The letter in part is as follows:
 'I am still perfectly alive and well, though quite few German bullets have passed by and quite few shells and shrapnel have oursted by me. too. It is lucky krupp has sold the kaiser such rot ten stuff. In fact after while men do not pay much attention to the shells. You can hear them coming and most of the time you have the leisure to lay down, gen erally in the mud shells and shrap- nel are a good deal less dangerous when you lay flat on the ground or
 in a trench.
 As to the bullets, there are two
 kinds, those that whistle and are harmless, and those that do not whistle. The last ones you gener- ally meet by accident and always
 get the worst of it.
 II am in Alsace at the front or very near the front, according to
 what We are doing For a long time l have taken the outposts at an old railway station digging all the time towards the Germans. and now only a very few hundred feet from them. At other times We have built some defense works and taken part in actions.
 Tt seems to me that 1t is yes terday that 1 left home and there are now six months that l have taken my place in the army. l have been promoted once and stand now to pass shortly to a superior rank.
 T am in a good regiment, com posed mostly of men from the Jura Mountains, and everything would be all right if it was not for the weath CT We have. Rain, snow and rain without stop for five months. The mud is knee deep, and everything is wet and damp, but the spring is coming and 1 surely would like to see the sun.
 II would have liked very much to join the staff of the English army, but I came too late, anyhow I expect to be able to do so yet. saw us in front of the woods at ---- amongst the shells and the bullets. There was that day d serious action, luckily our regiment did not suffer much, New Years eve was a little better. We were in a small village and on this great event, the kaisers birthday, we did not give the Germans a great lot of time for festivities. They got sure ly something on that day.
 "On the whole the situation. es- pecially the last two weeks, is really good Everyone of our actions on
 ue whole front is successful; slow. ly the steel tongues of the allied armies are closing on the Germans. It is slow, so some people say, but they have never been obliged to storm a trench, cut the barbed wires ulutI lire Ol tllt lllttlltIy tllu al tillery, and finish with the bayonet, otherwise they would not speak that way. But one day will come when those unspeakable Germans will be obliged to leave their last trench, and when We shall fight again in the open, then those people will not be able to run fast enough in front of us and they will have some score to pay. Everyone is sure that success is ours, and that very soon some great events will take place.
 "The morale of all our men is eX- cellent, their clothing warm and good; we have plenty of material. plenty of ammunition, plenty of food. The Germans are firing less, they are eating less; they begin to doubt their kaiser. The demoral- ization of their prisoners is complete, mostly due to starvation and to the fire of our deadly artillery