New Britain herald., 1915-10-09
VIVID DESCRIPTION
 OF EUROPEAN WAR
Soldier in Canadian Regiment
 Writes to Local Friend

Newspaper readers are satiated, as
 fronts of Europe. The war news is given much publicity. Occasionally
 however a letter giving a resume of 1he adventures of an individual comes to hand and is read with interest. Such a letter has been received by a young man in this city who prefers that his name and the name of his fighting friend be not published The
 letter is very interesting. It is as
 follows:
 Dear Frank
 "I was very glad to receive your letter today and glad to hear you are
 getting on well. I often thought of you while in the trenches. Well Frank, have had a very rough time of it over here. I joined the first week the war broke out and have been over here a year now. l was wounded by a shell exploding a few feet from me, blowing me up. re- ceived a concussion of the spine ana had both legs paralized and several other things. That was on May IS so you see I have been in the hospltal four months. My legs have recovered sufficiently to allow me to walk about a little. I go out to tea three or four times a week in motor cars ana know 6 lot of people here now. am the cnly Canadian at this hospital. The people think lot of the Canadians over here. They did such good work in Belgium and France. The war news has been none too bright lately but the Germans are getting an awful up all along the line. The Germans have been preparing for war for years Even at that they have no nerve and are very cowardly in the open and in bayonet charges they show very little fight. They are all right behind trenches and with their artillery. They are very inhuman and torture their prisoners like the Indian savages years ago. Some of our boys were crucified at Ypres, being bayo- netted and stuck to barn door with hayonets and left there to die in agony. I am in the machine gun sec tion, am corporal and have charge of enc gun and eight men. We can fire 500. rounds in one minute, the corporal doing the firing. One man feeds the gun and the rest carry am- munition We have six guns in the battalion and 53 men in our gun sec- tion. In the battle of Ypres where our battalion was surrounded we lost 40 out of 53. I was the only corporal left and all our guns were blown to pieces in front of us before we left! In 8 battalion of 100 men we only had 19S left. The Canadian casual 0 Hny lost about twice as many. The dead and dying were strewn around for miles and that is what I had to crawl over to get out when we lost our guns and were surrounded. I would lie down behind corpse and take a pot at the Germans with my rifle and then move on. I must have done this for miles. I had nothing to eat for three days except some biscuits and some water which got from a brook which was filled with the dead. I was so weak and dry I could hardly walk and didn't care whether I lived or died. Finally I came across a bat tery of artillery where I spent good night and had lots to eat. I was an
 awful sight and covered with blood
 and soaking wet. The next day and day someone would come wandering
 ill until thsre were thirteen of us. That's all that ever did get back. I
 had two of my men with me when I
 started and one was shot down be-
 hind be. The other thought he would take short cut but he never came
 back. All this happened between April 21 and 2S at Ypres and Longe- marche. Shortly after we made an attack on the Germans and cleaned
 them all out of that district, killing
 them in thousands and losing very few ourselves. I was also in the battle of