Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1918-12-25
Nov. "a, 1918.

Today has been set apart as a
special letter day to our Dads and
the censorship has been so changed
that we can tell where we are, what
we have done and where we have
been, so here goes. Base hospital
No. 13, where / have now been for
the last four months, is in Limoges,
about one-third of the way from
Bordeaux to Paris. There are three
base hospitals here in the city, which
has population of 100000, and there
is room for several thousand pa
tients in all three hospitals. There
where patients ( get their strength
back after leaving the hospital, be-
fore going back to their outfits. How
ever, none go back any more, bat will
be sent home to duty there, if able.
Now, l am going to tell where /
have been over here, this being my
first opportunity. We landed in St..
Nazaire, July 2, 1917, where we went
into camp outside the city and drill
ed there for nine days, when we took
train and rode for 48 hours, were
billeted in little town called Menan-
court, not far from the st. Mihiel Sec
tor, where we could hear the big guns
at the front and often we could
watch air fights. Menancourt is not
far from Barbecue, which has suf-
fered lot from air raids during the
war. We drilled with the French
Alpines, the crack troops Of France,
while in Menancourt. From there
we went further away from the lines
to a little town 20 miles south of
Neufchateau, by the name of Dau-
blain, this being about the middle of
September. We drilled every day,
while in Daublain but did not have it
very hard and had chance to trav-
ell around to some of the nearby
towns when off duty. I was in a
platoon of bombers and we drilled a
lot along that line, throwing hand
grenades and learning how to carry
out bombing raids, which we never
had to do, as later we got Stokes
trench mortars which throw three
inch shell weighing between ten and
eleven pounds, and are loaded with
high explosives, doing great damage.
The extreme range is about 800 yards
/ could write book about them so I
shall have to cut that out.
On Nov. 2, we moved to Brevaumes
only two or three miles from Dam
blain, where we were billeted until
March, when we went to the trenches
in the vicinity of Verdun. We first
went into the Les Eparges section,
southeast Of Verdun, where there had
been some terrible fighting during the
several attempts the Germans had
made to take Verdun, but while we
were there it was very quiet although
the artillery did some work..
On Easter Sunday we left this
place and went to position almost
east of Verdun. Here we had our
trench mortars set up at three differ
ent points, Chaltillon, Elk and Chems
Woods. You can find Elk and Chal-
tillon on the map. The lines ran al
most through these two towns and
Chnu Woods was part way between
them. They could hardly be called
towns, as they were all in ruins. No
one had been there but soldiers for
three or four years. We lived in
dugouts built by the French, which
were quite comfortable although in
tested by rats, which were the largest
I ever saw. A good many of the fell
lows got lice but I had the good luck
never to get any. Some of the dug
outs were large and deep being forty
feet under ground, so were pretty
safe, while others were small and
covered with bomb-proof metal, with
sometimes a few logs and dirt.
Everything had to be camoufaged,
mortars without knowing they were
there. It was quiet during the two
months we were there, broken by one
or two attempted German raids, our
trench mortars doing good work in
stopping them. In the middle of
May, we were relieved by the French
and hi1xed out mast Verdun to a place