The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1918-12-19
A Letter from France

Montville, where the author spent man,
summers with his grandparents, Mr.. an,
Mrs. j. o. Bartlett. He has been il
France year and his brother, Lieut.. C
r. Richards, has been there nearly tw,
years:
Dear Father: Did you get the letter
sent a while ago with the Christina.
package slip2 l saw in the New York
Times that there would be no room fol
Christmas packages, but they must hav;
found an available boat somewhere. The
article recommended giving the money
for presents to the Y. M. C. A., and let
ting them use it on celebrations. would
recommend, however, if you want to give
to any organization, to choose the Sal
walton Army, which realizes that the
'doughboys" in the trenches, the ones
who really deserve the most, can't al
ways come back to the cities after it.
A couple of hours after l put my last
letter in the mail box, we got orders to
move to the front the next day, with an
American division. The trip was short,
but quite interesting, We passed along
roads with high screens of camouflage
along the side, chicken wire with grass
or colored burlap twisted through it;
through two or three ruined villages, and
over ruined roads that extended all the
way to our destination, and all through
the country thereabouts. The ruined
towns were interesting at first to the
passer-by, as an indication of the ravages
of war, however the inhabitants may
have looked at the matter, but the ruined
roads were, on the contrary, quite an
noying. Eventually we came to a cross
road, where the M. P. made us 60 con-
siderable distance apart, saying that the
road was under observation. This began
to seem like war, even more so than the
distant rumble of a barrage, or puffs from
anti-aircraft guns over on the horizon, or
a Paris AFRAID. If they should throw
over anything in our direction, it would
be quite personal affair, but they neg
lected us, slight that everyone was will
ling to forgive.
Batteries of 75s peeped out at the side
of the road as we went along, but we
continued unmolested until we slid down
a hill into the town which was to be our
home. 1t was chiefly remarkable for the
amount of mud it contained, and for the
fact that only two houses in the town
had any traces of roof. There were
enough walls and portions of walls to
make up fair sized village, but an I'M
fortunate lack of roofing. On the hill in
back of the town, however, the town
was entirely surrounded by hills>, were
several good wooden barracks and COM
forting number of solid-looking dugouts,
which the Germans had thoughtfully left
behind when they retreated out of this
country about month ago. They had
lived here for four years, and made some
dugouts IN that time Many
had been fitted out with electricity, had
two rooms, wooden walls and floors, and
ceilings reinforced by concrete and tree
trunks two feet thick, in addition to some
feet of earth. l imagine that they were
quite home-like when fitted up with car
pets, tables, chairs, beds, pictures, pianos,
etc. There were plenty of signs of the
German occupancy of this country. Signs
in German were at every corner. Ger
man cemeteries scattered all around this
country, the remains of the German
headquarters in the town, with parts of
German notices and inscriptions visible
where the wall was still whole, German
and ammunition piled here
and there. l found German camouflaged
helmet and cap, which l will try to send
home if get chance before / lose them.
The pla6e was very quiet, for the most
part, while we were there. There were
three Boche planes over the town to well
come us, but the guns chased them away.
They came quite often on good days, pre-
sumably trying to locate some guns
which were near us and doing quite a
bit OF business. The only time they
dropped anything was three or four morn
ings ago, when they dropped some propa-
Ganda on us. Most of it blew up onto the
hill, but few copies came down in town.
It quoted two notes to President Wilson,
and one of his answers, IN an attempt to
show that Germany wanted peace, and,
in big print, at the beginning and end, the
question "Why are we fighting?" They
will never get anything that way, as
most of the American army is too intelli-
gent to be fooled by it. took walk up
onto the hill to seek copy for sonve-
mir, and was looking around up there,
when heard something like an elevated
train 60 over my head, then bang, and
cloud of dust and smoke rose from the
hill on the other side of the town. An
other followed right after it, and thiro
two or three minutes later didn't tlnc
any propa ganda. Speaking of propaganda
while we were back at the hospital al
which we were stationed before going tt
the front, we saw one fleet OF hundred
aeroplanes pass over US on the way tt
drop some of it on the German troops
At least, we heard that is what they did
It seemed as it the sky was full of planes
in fact, there was, very nearly, with tina
one big fleet, three or four ordinary con
VOWS of ten or twelve, and some singh
planes, all up there at the same time
Another interesting event while we Wer
back there was the funeral of M. Glen
enceau's son-in-law, who died at tn
hospital It was very simple, and too
place at 7 A. M. Clemenceau himsel
was there the evening before. bu
couldn't stay for the funeral. His brothe
and. his daughter, the widow, and a te'
others walked behind the hearse to tn
cemetery.
To get back to our first front. tt
country in which we did all our drivln
was very billy. There was hardly lev
place big enough for croquet cour
Our forward posts were on top OF rid
Of hills at the edge of q wide plain, whie
extended as far as the eye could Teac
1t was perfectly flat and nothing on
excepting q few ruins of villages and
! tree here and there. There was roa