Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1916-03-29

soup out of them, putting in little
salt. At that l was far luckier THAI
tie fellows who had to boil harness
weather for five or six hours in order
t. make the hot water taste like soup.
saw men act like savages, eating
pieces of brown paper.
There were perhaps not more than
two thousand women among the re
Treating horde with US, and it is 4
fact worth recording that they were
kindly treated and given whatever
comforts were available by soldiers
who were otherwise dead to every
feeling. I have seen such men, gaunt,
staggering along half-naked, with a
few pieces of cloth for shoes, unable
to speak, with barely strength left to
stop near a dying horse and cut Il
stringy steak from its flank, straighten
up for moment near one of the wo
mems carts and smilingly tender their
last mouthful of food to some of the
women
"The treatment of the women on this
dreadful retreat was to me the most
wonderful, the most moving, the most
Heroic part Of the whole retreat. These
poor women in their fight from their
homes had in many cases been unable
to bring enough clothes to cover
them. Often they We're without stock
ings or underskirts. or hats or shawls
or cloaks. I have seen time and time
again some freezing soldier take off his
oyercoat and force it upon some one
Of these women and seem almos.
ashamed to look upon her shivering
body as he made the offer. Then he
would search along the road for hours
until he was able to strip some dead
man of his clothes to replace that he
lad so freely given"
What Halter regarded as his most
remarkable experience was the sight
of mad soldier dying from starva-
ton Clothed only in a ragged I'M
dershirt, he was running barefoot
down snow-coyered Albanian road
straight as an arrow, believing as he
ran" he said. He ran on and on
down that road. seeing nothing, yet
wonderfully avoiding stumbling over
| the bodies of other dead and diving
soldiers and the meat-stripped car
casses of the army horses which block
ed the way. Suffering intensely as l
myself was, 1 turned and watched this
strange figure. At last a half mile
down the road he pitched forward and
as passed him later I saw he was
stone dead"
Other than that incident, there is
che other that will stick in my mem
ory so long as I live" said Halter.
This was the hanging of a Serb
mother by the Austrian troops before
was made a prisoner. We were
marching across rough country nearf
Lochnizter when we stopped near a
"ayside hut at its spring to get a drink
Of water. Colonel He'll of our regi
ment also went to get a drink. AS he
arose from the spring a shot came
from the hut. That shot was fired by
woman. she stood at the door, an
old shotgun in one hand, baby in
the other.
Zone of the captains ordered her
hanged. There was nothing else to do
but execute her. AS rope was placed
a. out her neck and she was led to the
nearest tree all she said was this, in a
hard, cold voice: My husband is 4
soldier. l too die for Serbia She
made no appeal. She did not cry out.
We left her body hanging there in the
wind. he baby was picked p and sent
70 the nearest prison camp, to be cared
for"
Through the efforts of Robert Hover
lex representing the United States
| among the Austrian prisoners, Halter