Cleveland County herald. (Rison, Ark.) 1888-current, 1918-07-04

small bitches. They intercepted me
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
did it, but / 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 it was almost invariably case of
wading through. Some of them, no
doubt, | could have jumped if l had
been in decent shape, but with bad
ankle and in the weakened condition
in which l was, it was almost out OF
the question.
One night l came to ditch about
eight or nine feet wide. / thought 1
YVES strong enough to jump 1t and It'll
was worth trying as the discomfort I
suffered after wading these ditches
was considerable. Taking long run,
| jumped as hard as l could, but II
missed it 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 l was
covered and it was too wet to scrape
off. / just had to wait until 1t dried
and scrape it off then.
In many sections of Belgium through
which / had to pass l encountered
large areas of swamp and marshy
ground and rather than waste the
time involved in looking for better
underfooting-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 l made, there
was an added danger to me in the fact
that the squash, squash" noise which
I made might easily be overheard by
Belgians and Germans and give my
position away. Nobody would cross
| a swamp or marsh in that part of the
| country unless he was trying to get
away from somebody, and l realized
my danger but could not get around 1t.
It was a common sight in Belgium
to see a small donkey and common
ordinary mich COW hitched together,
pulling wagon. When l first OBJ
served the unusual combination, I
| thought it was a donkey and OK or
bull, but closer inspection revealed to
me that cows were being used for the
purpose.
From that I 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 1 spent
nearly eight weeks wandering through
Belgium, and in all that time l don't
believe l saw more than half dozen
| horses in the possession of the native
population.
One of the scarcest things in Gel
many, apparently, is rubber, for 1
noticed that their motor trucks. or lor-
r. RES unlike our 0v =, srd no rubber
tires. Instead heavy iron bands were
employed. / could hear them come
rumbling along the stone roads for
miles before they reached the spot
where l happened to be in hiding.
When / saw these military roads in
Belgium for the first time, with their
heavy cobblestones that looked as if
they would last for centuries, l real
lied at once why it was that the Ger
mans had been able to make such a
| rapid advance into Belgium at the
start of the war.
I noticed that the Belgians used
dogs to considerable extent to pull
their carts, and / thought many times