The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1918-08-22


small bitches. They hsecrcerted hs
at every half mile or so. sometimes
more frequently. The canals and the
big rivers / could swim. OF course,
got soaked to the skin every time l
did It, but l was becoming hardened
to that.
These little bitches, however, were
too narrow to swim and too wide to
jump. They had perhaps two feet of
water in them and three feet of mud.
and 1t was almost invariably a case Of
wadlng through. Some of them, no
doubt, could have jumped If / had
been in decent shape, but with bad
ankle and In the weakened condition
in which l was, IL was almost out OF
the question.
One night l came to a ditch about
eight or nine feet wide. / thought 1
was strong enough to jump 1t and 1t
was worth trying as the discomfort /
suffered after wading these bitches
was considerable. Taxing a long run,
jumped as hard as / could, but
missed 1t by four or five inches and
landed in about two feet of water and
three of mud. Getting out of that
mess was quite job. The water was
too dirty and too scanty to enable me
| to wash off the mud with which 1 was
covered and 1t was too wet to scrape
off. l just had to wait until it dried
and scrape it off then.
In many sections of Belgium through
which l had to pass l encountered
large areas of swamp and marshy
ground and rather than waste the
time involved in looking for better
nderfooting-which might not have
found anyway used to pole right
through the mud. Apart from the
discomfort of this method of travel
ing and the slow time made, there
was an added danger to me in the fact
that the squash, squash" noise which
l made might easily be overheard by
Belgians and Germans and give my
position away. Nobody would cross
swamp or marsh in that part of the
country unless he was trying to get
away from somebody, and 1 Lealized
my danger but could not get arcsnd ii.
1t was a common sight in Belgium
to see a small donkey and a common
ordinary mich COW hitched together,
pulling a wagon. When l first OBJ
served the unusual combination,
thought it was n donkey and OK or
bull, but closer inspection revealed to
me that cows were being used for the
purpose.
From that was able to observe
there must be very few horses left In
Belgium except those owned by the
Germans. Cows and donkeys are now
horses and mules. Altogether l spent
nearly eight weeks wandering through
Belgium, and in all that time l don't
believe / saw more than half dozen
horses in the possession Of the native
population.
One of the scarcest things in Ger.
many, apparently, is rubber, for
noticed that their motor trucks, or Tor
ries, unlike our own, had no rubber
tires. Instead heavy iron bands were
employed. / could hear them come
rumbling along the stone roads fol-
miles before they reached the spot
where l happened TO be in hiding
When / saw these military roads ir
Belgium for the first time, with theiI
heavy cobblestones that looked as II
. they would last for centuries, l real
lied at once why 1t was that the Ger
mans had been able to make such Q
rapid advance into Belgium at thu
start of the war.
/ noticed that the Belgians uset
+ dogs to a considerable extent to pull
, their carts, and thought many timei