The Waxahachie daily light. [volume] (Waxahachie, Tex.) 1894-current, 1915-03-20

But it didn't work with Chapman
at all He was hit the very first day
in the arm.
| The trenches are an underground
! city filled with unspeakaDiy dirty
F; citizens. They are in a taneie of
sunken streets. the houses are in the
earth, and the streets, in my dis.
trict, converged in one place. which
Americans called 'Lungacre Square,
Americans called 'Lnngacrc
Square" into very exclusive TRAN
gle, where all the officers lived"
There are street signs, too, Thing
hole in the ground and now and then
there are danger signs. warming the
passerby to keep his head low. 1t
was two-mile journey through the
! trench from our trent TO the rear
trench. ard or Tff'itss 70 II f11,.ss, -.,..
would meet and pass many meh.
The soldiers always speak to each
ether nj such meetings, jest as two
men pass the time OF da.. IN a coun-
try road. The lieutenant is practi-
cally the mayor of this underground
! CITY. the sergeant might be likeneG
TO policemen. There IS trading un-
! der way. too. Tobacco is the money,
/ ami the stoTchcGrer is the chan. who
at any certain time, has more of
some one thing Ian he wants and
| less OF another that he needs so that
! every man is village e-keeper
! at one time OF another
Do you want to go to music
| hall-there's sure to be certain
! dugout somewhere in the trenches
! where musical men gather. In our
trench, George Ullard, "a negro. from
Galveston, Tex, played wonderfully
on a banjo with one string, and in
our mud hut there was the music
! OF mouth organs, an accordion and
| Ullards banjo every night Tho
| German trench was only forty-ive
! feet away from us at this point, and
! they used to listen to us every even
| ing and cheer up.
There are many little tasks with
which the citizens of the trench
| town busy themselves. You'll see a
man cleaning his rifle, another will
! be ro-flOoring his hut with straw,
! another will be rigging a bottle on
stick for the Germans to shoot at
/ two or three may be preparing
| dummy figure for ii German target
another may be marking his initials
! in the side of the trench by stick
! ing his empty cartridge shells into
! the earth. There are artists. too, il
I this strange colony. Almost every
/ day there was a wooden tombstone
! with some sort of design and a Bel
gian named Durmino always did
The lettering, You might find us
almost any forenoon working away
/ with red hot poker, burning
names and decorations on a wooden
, {: osa which We had constructed cut
| OF any piece of wood We could find.
| There we're thre" Americans in
| my machine gun squat of sixteen
! met - Eugene jacobs who still OWES
Ittf pl Gb IN I,t .is. AZ;
| Victor Chapman of New York, and
myself, and or Thanksgiving day
We arranged d feast in our hut. Jose
! Ames, an Argentinian, heard that
we had picked up some stray chick
| ems, and had snot a gvoSe and that
Jacobs was cooking them for some
| sort OF a banquet and he invited
! himself, saying; Il know what
Thanksgiving day is. and I'm South
American, SO | think l ought to
come
The other twelve men i'll the
squad didn't know what Thanksgiv-
ing day was, but they knew chick
en- when they smelled them, SO We
invited them all. The chicken was
served out of a huge magnificent
old china bowl which we had found
in the deserted house of the may
or Of small town nearby. Chapman
who knows antiques when he sees
! them said the bowl was at least 800
years old and that he was going to
take home with him when he left
the trenches, but one day when he
permitted five infantrymen of Il
newly arrived division to sleep IN
our hut, shell struck the roof,
broke the bowl, and killed FIVE
men. We left the men and bowl
buried in the cayed in hut and built
a new house,
4 tho Enanirn