The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1918-10-19
WELLS RIVER
Capt. Henry Munsell Writes About the
st. Mihiel Drive,

Oh lhhANA bAAfSs
The following letter was received by
DR.. w. II. Munsell from his son, Henry,
who is captain in Company c, loSd M.
G. B. and who was in action in the recent
American offensive. 1t is the only letter
of his as yet published and is only now
published inasmueh as it is wholly de-
scriptiye of the engagement and the sur
rounding country
Sept, IS, 1918.
Dear Dad; Am safely through anoth-
err drive, rather tame one compared
with the Chateau Thierry affair, but
big success from military standpoint.
You people back home have read Of the
drive, so will send you cable as soon
as we get back where it is possible
We attacked on the left flank over as
rough a country as you could pick out,
over ridges and valleys as steep as Buck
ley's hill, through woods and wire COW
cred fields until we reached the last ridge
and could look way out over the plain
toward Metz and see villages and am
munition dumps going up in smoke 1t
was great sensation. Made a recon
naissance of our part of the front a
couple of days before the attack and had
platoon in line when the fun started.
Brought up the rest of the company
Wednesday night in a pouring rain. 1t
had been raining for two days and the
roads through the woods were mess.
You may be able to imagine part of
The confusion fbnt St,ra ~ k1ty
panies preparations for big attack.
The last artillery moving into place, am
munition wagons moving forward, the
French outfits going out and in. 1t was
some night, believe me. For some happy
reason the Huns never put over shot.
1t would have been a terrible place if he
had. We expected our bombardment to
commence at 4 a. M, but just as we were
in the worst of our midnight tangle the
noise started. Trench mortars of all
sizes, Stokes mortars, every sort of can
non from 75's to 270's, opened up at
o'clock and expected return lombard
ment at once with much gas, as we were
in woods but only few shells came
over toward our front lines. Our bat
teries sure did put their guns out of
commission in short order. / put my
company into a ravine for protection
and found that the company following
had got lost, so had to get them located
Then we got our mules and carts back
to the rear and waited for morning.
c and ID companies were to be reserve
brigade companies, so we followed the
support Had the cooks make some good
warm coffee and fry some bacon before
we left. The rain held up except for oc-
casional showers, much to our Joy
We started into the departure trench
about o'clock and got our only Smelling
at that point Only one of their guns
was left in commission. That was cap
tured with all its crew in the afternoon.
None of our company was hurt When
we got to the jumping off trench we
could see our infantry on the hill just
opposite bringing back nun prisoners by
the dozens. We had a hard time carry
ing those heavy machine guns, tripods,
ammunitions and packs so it was pretty
hard keeping up with the infantry The
first Hill we had to climb down was about
like coming down Baldwin's water tank
hill and climbing up the next crest like
going up the same hill again. To our
left was valley, the dividing line be-
tween our division and the French di-
vision Across the valley We're some big
hills like ours, and we could watch the
French infantry attacking and fanking
machine gun nests. They were held up
short time longer than we were and
some of our guns machine gunsl opened
up on battery of Hun machine guns.
That was all the firing we did had to
put some guns on our left flank in the
afternoon, as the French hadn't kept up
with us, so got quite lot behind the
attacking battalion that evening
We raided some boche dugouts that
evening and got some blankets, cigars,
tobacco and souvenirs Earlier in the