Belding banner. (Belding, Mich.) 1889-1918, 1917-12-26
WAS IN BATTLE
OF THE AISNE

Captain ROLAND Parmeter of AL
bion, now with the u. S. Medical Re-
serve Corps in France, who is quite
well known here and in Kent county,
writes of his experiences in the fam
Gus battle Of the Aisne, which took
place last October.
scissors, Aisne,
October 30, Monday Morning.
| Here / am still but we are about
through, in fact, expect to get away
from this place Wednesday, the 81,
going back to Dion by the way of
Paris and shall stop at Paris for at
least two days, for a little rest and
sightseeing.
The battle of the Aisne is now q
part of history and no doubt you have
read fully about it. We, our operat.
ing team, have been in scissors all
the time about five miles back of tho
line Of the battle. We have worked
almost constantly since last Tuesday
morning. We operated-all eight
operating teams inthe hospital-first
upon the French wounded and when
they were all cleaned up, we began on
the Germans. OF course there are a
great many deaths and the wounds
are terrible. The French cared for
the wounded most excellently and
Systematically and / am sure If we
Americans can do as well for our
own wounded when the time comes.
we should be more than satisfied.
Many of the terrible abdominal
cases never reached US, "going OUT
on the way and then again many
cases were operated upon in the
"dugouts" closer to the lines. All
tfk1aocaoO (xxrD..n1aIl
were very young ranging from Is to
20 years, only one was older, 27 years.
Already most Of our cases have
been moved to the base hospital, it
being the policy of the French to
keep the close up hospitals as near
ly empty as possible and ready for
any emergency such as "come back"
or a new attack.
Yesterday | went out of the city
about five miles to see a German
camp where prisoners were kept
those who had been taken in the last
attack. We found them a sorry and
bedrabbled lot in pens, penned in a
barb wire enclosure and machine guns
trained upon them in case of need.
No need though for they are as anxi-
Gus to be captured as we are to take
them. They say that many of them
never resisted at all but held up their
hands and called "Kamarad, Kama
rad" One boy on my operating table
told me that our cannon fire had been
so fierce that neither he or his
comrades had anything to eat for five
days-impossible to bring up sup
plies.
While waiting out at this camp, an
other bunch of 500 were brought in
and bedrabbled lot they were to
all boys-not a man in the lot that
was over % or &c years old.
The French lost very few as pris-
oners, don't know the exact number,
and comparatively few wounded
many less than at Verdun, IL 900 Ger
man prisoners were taken.
Our town has been most constantly
shelled up to the beginning of the
battle; since then not at all except
he first night-one shell struck ex-
actly 108 feet from the door of the
house where we sleep. A wagon load
of II French soldiers was struck
while approaching the bridge here, all
being killed. Well, as / said before,
its all over now and we are most glad
to go back to our base. / don't know
what my next duty will be but prob
ably visit to the British or Italian
| fronts.
I'm feeling fne-weather is beast
ly. With love to you both,
ROLAND.