Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1915-09-24
REMINGTON WRITES
Of WAR CONDITIONS
A. J. Remington Writes Charles
E. Will Of Mandan of Horrible
Conditions in France

Inc following letter by "A. j. Rem
ington, who has seen service at the
front in France, was recently received
by Charles E. Will of Mandan. The
letter was written from Margate, Eng
land, and in part is as follows:
81 have been back from France
since the Goth Of June. | was wound
ed on the 18th of June and they sent
me back to England twelve days lat
er. But l am getting along fine now
and l expect that in about ten days
they will be shipping me across the
channel to hit the BALI again. At
present there are about 12,500 wound
ed in hospitals in the north of Eng
land-and let me tell you that don't
believe anybody could be treated
better than we are. OF course,
there are SO many of us that we can't
expect special nurse, but they GER
tainly do everything in their power
for us. The government expects to
send 1900 new regiments to France
within the next two weeks. l never
saw SO many soldiers in all my life.
Nearly everybody you see is in uni
form, and the girls almost worry the
life out of those who are in plain
clothes. 1t is nothing to see Is or 20
girls at the seaside resorts with a
handful of white feathers, and every
man they see in plain clothes gets a
white feather pinned on him. The
whole country over in France is just
like one big city. Altogether, the
French, English, Indian and Austral-
ian troops over in France number
high over ten million. This might
sound like fish to you, Charlie, but
there are two million men left in five
lines of trenches all the time, and as
fast as they are killed or wounded,
they are taken out of the trenches and
sent back to the hospitals or buried.
The trenches are then reinforced
from the reserve troops in the rear. !
thought that the Philippine war was
He'll but there are more men killed
and wounded in this war in one day
than there were in the Spanish-Amer
can war altogether. They figure that
the average life of man in this war
is nine days and the average life Of
horse 16 days. At st. Julin the
trenches were so close together that
we relied more on throwing hand
grenades than We did in using our
rifles, Our first line of trenches was
40 yards from the Germans first line
of trenches. Anybody who could
speak German found it very easy to
talk to the Germans in their own
trenches, but not very often, as there
is too much noise to do very much OF
it. This spring, when we first went
over to France, it certainly was He'll.
There was not much fighting at first,
but the country was in an awful shape.
The Germans had been driven back
about five miles during the winter and
they had not buried their dead. TO us
it looked as though they would take
their men when they were killed and
lay them among the sand bags on the
top of the trenches. Of course, in the
winter the bodies would freeze, but
this spring, when it started to thaW,
the smell was just Hell on Earth,
Many of our men could not stand it
at all. Cholera set in and men died
right and left. For days we did
nothing but spread quicklime over the
ground. I don't know how long this
war will last, but, to save me, l can't
see anything less than two more
years." ..-