The Wilson times. [volume] (Wilson, N.C.) 1896-19??, 1918-07-02
EYENTE:uL. TRIP
OVER THE. SEAS
Captain .Ciddens, Writes Inter-
estihgly. Of the Trip Across
Tackled. u-Boats.
AND HAD A. COLLISION

Dear Homefolks:--Well, here ws
are "Over Here" and At for the bat
tle.that will make the world safe for
permanent peace.
We left our American training
camp one bright spring-like morning
and two days, later. arrived. At.
where we remained for two days. ana
than entrained. for, arriving d
daybreak. and. Immediately boarded
a transport for, arriving, three
days later, being, Joined there by q
battleship ad several other trans
portssleaying, for; the. long; trip, across
the, ocean. Thera are many things
we could tell you that would be Of
interest but for fear Jerry" might
get some Of. the, facts wa are not al
lowed to tell you. now.. Our trip ov-
er was right much Of an experiences
for many of us and especially whan
we arrived. at the danger z0na and
were Joined. hE 6 regular UNITED
STATES Grey Hounds of the sea.
This was certainly a grand sight to
us as; they sourried all over thH saA
around onr boats looking for the
murderers of the sea: the submarine
but. on one bright moonlight night
at about IL o'clock we were all re-
warded by some real excitement
whanl ona Of the boats saw subma-
rine as it rose to the top and triad
to torpedo one, of our boats. instant
ly these, American Destr0yers shot
out and around to the ship In dis
tresa and began to drop depth bombs
and shoot solid shot and shells into
the submarine, knocking this one all
to pieces and when starting back to
their posts another submarine was
discovered and the fun started
again. We were all ON deck With
our life belts on and ready to get
into the water, but when the destro-
ers got so busy we forgot all fear
and shouted every time the subma-
rfne was hit, and when the signal
was given "all clear" we sang Amer
lea and went back to our hunks. o.
course we didn't sleep much that
night. At that point the days are
not very long, day breaking at about
2:15 and night falls at about 10000
p. m.
Another exciting time was when
just about to make our landing an
other boat twice as large as ours got
mixed in its course and ran into ours
knocking the front of our boat on
and nearly turning ours over. We
saw what was going to happen and
our Captain got up high on the deck
and said STEADY, Men," and it SEEM
ed to us that we knew everything
was going to turn out all right, and
none of our company got hurt al
though we got some wet up. There
were five or SIX men hurt and knock
ed off into the water and we had to
leave three in a hospital at; the
men hurt was not from our company
however.
We arrived at our present loca-
tion last Friday and since then our
captain has been acting Major in
place of our Major who was sent up
to the lines along with several 9TH
ers from our battalion; so since then
Lieut.. Dunn has been In charge OF
the company. We can hear the big
guns firing nearly all the time and
late evenings and early in
the mornings, and Air Craft can bv
seen and heard at most every hour
in the day. We are in fine shape
and ready for the duty that will
come to our lot soon. We are ltv-
ing in billets and shelter tents. and
like the change. The country
around here is very lovely, and to
look at the beautiful scenery. one
would think "Jerry" is very mean
man to keep on fighting as he does.
We heard To-day that our man had
Jerry" at point near "a
when he tried to rush over. We
haven't seen a paper in 50 long We
would fight over home paper. Our
mail has not found the way to W
either, so we are figuring that no
news will be good news.
Our address win Do (name) -
90. x. i1sth INF.
American y. !.