The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-04-20
TELLS OF HIS
 EXPERIENCES
Enlisted in German Army and Won Iron Cross For
 Bravery.

protests of the state department of this country, and who is now in New Haven, talks entertainingly of his ex- l periences in the field, although he is 1 decidedly reluctant to tell any of the! circumstances connected with his winning the Iron Cross which he wears Says L1ewelyn
 It was August 3 when he, drew up l on the German frontier. Instead of the customs officers which one usu-s 1 ally finds. there were ladies serving hot coffee and sandwiches to the passengers aboard the incoming 1 trains Most of these passengers l were refugees from England who were being welcomed back to. the Fatherland.
 1 got off at every stop the train told me they were full and would I have to go on. I finally found a place where they would accept me and we were sent to the drill ground. | The peace sergeants'' who had re- tired from ten to twenty years before, were in charge of the drill, and we had to stand around more than would ] have been the case had we been in charge of men who were in active Iservice. It is a tribute to these men that they got us in the shape they did. The class of soldiers we met at the start of the awan, were better educated than the ordinary regulars. Nine weeks later wer were at the LfOnI- F Ia1leO 10 gel the Iu1l g nl1le weeks training however, for at the end of six weeks my commandant Jeanne to me anad informed me that because of conlrauni cation from the state department of the United States | I was bounced. I sent in a protest to the Kaiser, but it never got there.
 But I waited. went down to the l station, with about 700 girls,2 to see my company off when it entrained. | tried to get through the gates. but II
 
 I and hoped the train as, it came by. f My comrades were glad to see me land would do anything for me. ssY1ou l can have my boots, said one. Take this coat said another. took them 1 and with that disguise managed to Eelude the officers.
 I When we got we'll into France, 1 however. I'fessed up to the captain and he called me down in about the I prettfest fashion you aevers saw. He spent ten minutes at it, reminding mo Eof the responsibility had placed up- | on him. I felt smaller. really I had not been considerate, but a. cad. l If I got hit with a bullet I could sue him and force him to pay.
 l He really was tickIed with the I though He let me march in the
 column with the men when we went
 forward. Soon a man became foot
 sick. I took his pack In the v1l-
 
 thought I was a prisoner. You know,
 the first thing soldier makes a prisoner do is to carry his baggage
 and was doing that in a civilians
 suit. The difficulty with this pris- ii oner was that he sang their own
 songs with them Z. Finally they let me enlist wore la pair of French Work-trousers. A I sergeant was killed and I got his coat, I and it fitted admirably. Equpmeht s4 ! was not so before any were killed. fl T want to say something about T atrocities, of which you have heard ! so much I won't say there were
 none, for there were atrocities on i both sides. You've all heard of the Cathedral at Rheims and the way the barbarians shot it to pieces. I was l there at tine time We were not shooting at the thedraf sai1d the < French got onto this. They put a
 battery Tn Cathedral square. where they thought it would not be hit A
 German flyer spotted 1t soon and the
 Germans bombarded the square and
 incidentally hit the Cathedral
 We lay at Rheims for five weeks
 Every afternoon Between 5@and g. the
 French let loosesort of an after noon tea. The French shells gave
 warning, however, and you soon got
 over dodging, except when they | coming near you. Since Isfg was . , begun to arriveN The old French
 shells didn't worry the Germans a bit,
 but the American shells gave them : the surprise of their lives. The
 American shells break and scatter
 along the ground, going much fur
 ther. In addition; of the French
 shells about one in three expIodes,
 while with the American shells there : is an explosion with about nine out of ten.
 iaxr a. E two days in the village and repeated :. the operation twice Then we were sent back to the third line to rest. It is then that you have the best oppor- 5 tunity toS write letters and read and < sleep. The soil in the vicinity in . which we were was cha,lky. and con sequently they couldn't bury the men we'll There were many unpleasant orors. There were lights, but we ? could sleep from nightfa.ll until day ] break. It was wonderful.
 } In the morning they served hot } coffee. such as it, was. Then came
 drill Soldiers in the trenches have t to drill or they bet seedy. It was ther : that the 'goose-step' came in. Aside 9 from the good it does the legs, il t means that a man must have his s whole body under control Goose | step 8, man for half an hour and he t is as good a soldier as he was ter [, days before, when he went into the ' trenches. It, was during this time ir
 the third line that we had a chance tc
 clean up our kits.
 8 After a rest you went, back into 6 thet trenches, back to the second line
 and back into the trenches again. The only other duty we had was outpos duty. That is vile. You go out. bay T onet fixed, single step, and step ovel Il the barbed wire as you come to it n You find little trenches, really yindi
 vidual graves, in which you lie down And you have got to keep awake r Tn the trenches you stand. OnNout- }, post duty you are lying down. Also you must take all the responsibility
 You can't shift your position. becaust = if you do the straw beneath yol