The daily Alaskan., 1918-01-15

] letters being returned before his people could be notified was very great On l asking about this found that when man has been killed his letters are marked Killed" but instead of be- ing sent directly to his people they are returned to the war office and are sent from there, after the casualty has been made known, to his relatives. In this way many people are saved a great deal of premature worry and uneasi- 1 ness.
 I shall never forget the time l saw the Royal Horse artillery go into action. | for q more thrilling sight would be l hard to imagine was out alone in the car. and I had been doing patrol duty. I went rather closer to our fir Ing line than intended to, but decided to push on until l struck the route | nationale." so l would have good road all the rest of the way back to camp.
 had to go through the village Of ! DIckebuSch. and as came to the croSs- roads just outside the village sentry stopped me and said could not go on. If seems that some Germans had got machine gun in the steeple of the church and were cleaning up every thing that tried to pass. The horse artillery had been sent for, and I learn ed that they were on their way even | then.
 l decided to wait around and see what happened. So l pulled in to the side of the road. had hardly stopped
 when I heard q rush and rattle that sounded like all old nivyer in the dis tance. Around the curve dashed eight horses on the dctd gallop, pulling an eighteen poundcr behind them. They dashed by. but about fifty yards ahead of me they swung around and trained | that gun on the church.
 There was a moments pause, and then she spoke, and away went steeple, Germans, machine gun and all. The first shot had been q direct hit, and 1t couldn't have been better If they had tried a thousand years.
 It was the very next day after this event that gat into as tight fix as ever care to find myself. was order | ed to take three officers to place call
 ed Kemmcl had been there before,
 and from what had seen then wasn't
 eager about making the trip again.
 We started off about 1 o'clock and
 expected 10 be ra"k hy ,. noticed as | I-came to the Kemmcl road that there
 were two srutries on duty there, but
 as the only Sulutcd the officers and didn't say anything l thought no more
 about it. Now. Ecmmcl lies at the foot | of a hill and iS tucked in between Mount Nuir and Mount Kemmel It
 would be q cOZy little place in peace | time. but it iS an awful trap to get
 caught ill when there is n war on.
 I sent tue car up the hill as fast she ! could %. and it was Il long climb. AS
 We went over the brow and started on
 the down grade We ran right under the
 nose of the German artillery observers.
 This road was officially closed, and those sentrieS should have stopped us. Well. it scared me so that l went down that hill so fast those officers must have thought they were in para | chute. As we entered the village the
 shells commenced to drop in on us, and
 we ran for the nearest shelter, which happened to be brewery.
 There wasn't much left of the place
 anyway, as it had been in German
 hands. and We had shoIled them out of | it and when we had taken it they had shelled us out of it. Anyway, we left i the car and crawIed into the cellar. It
 was wet and filthy, hut It looked just
 like heaven 10 nle that day.
 We lay there in all this filth hour after hour, while the shells literally poured in all around us. They cer- tainly wasted lot of good ammunition ] trying to get us, but the best of it was | that they didn't succeed. One of the
 officers remarked during a moments
 silence that the crown prince of Ger ! many must have made his headquar- ters in the place when it was In Ger | man hands. Another officer replied ! that he wished the crown prince was l there now.
 We lay there till the fire let up, | which it did about 5 o'clock. twas
 worrying about getting back, and l
 was also wondering what had become
 of the car. If 1t was gone we might just as well kiss ourselves goOdby, for
 our chances of getting out on foot
 would be slim.
 When the fire had abated we came
 out and looked around The enemy
 certainly had made a mess of the place,
 for even the top story of the brewery
 had been shot away from over our
 heads. I went to look the car over, and you can just believe was relieved to
 find that, aside from having a few
 holes through the body, 1t was all -lu