Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1918-12-06
From Our Boys
"Over There" :"
From ALFRED f. BERGMAN
(To his mother, Mrs. Louise Berg
man,
Nov. 4th, 1918.

INOfs 1910.
My Dear Mother:-
These last two weeks we have been
constantly on the move, making and
breaking camps. We are now in a
different part of France, and SO far we
have had fine weather, not much rain
and quite warm for November. Last
week we saw our first afraid, four of
us walked to the village near our bar
racks and about seven o'clock we heard
the anti-air craft guns popping up in a
dozen places. The night was dark and
almost gloomy and it was great sight
to see, the big search-lights sweeping
the sky with rackets and shells burst
ing. The siren the signal of the begin
ming OF the afraid emptied the little
village in few minutes and we were
almost left alone on the street watching
the excitement. The raid lasted only
about 80 minutes at which time the sig
nal was again given and everybody
came out of the bomb-proof dugouts
and went back home, as tho nothing
had happened. Most of our hiking has
been done at night, in order to avoid
all danger OF the enemy seeing us. The
last twenty miles we have hiked has
sure the marks of war, the trees which
once lined the wonderful roads are
shattered, and the roads, we'll worn by
the great amount of traffic are pitted
with shell holes. We came through
several villages completely ruined only
few walls remaining and hardly a
Frenchman in sight.
We landed at our destination about
ten o'clock at night and pitched tents,
four OF us pitched together snd with
the aid of burning candle under our
steel helmet made ourselves quite COM
Portable. The second night we located
dugout, built by the Germans, about
twenty feet below ground, it was quite
clean but very damp. Yesterday we
had little to do, so we secuted around
the woods and trenches and found a
fine dugout, it has one bunk in it. wood
floor and sides and steel roof covered
with sand bags, window, we all got
busy cleaning it out, built a stoye and
in a couple hours had a fire burning
and almost some of the comforts of
home.
This afternoon, myself and one of
the boys walked over to village to the
"Y hut" and Salvation Army and came
back with real American chocolate and
cigaretts, and l wish you could have
dropped in on us in the evening when
our hunks were made, fire and candles
burning, we celebrated my anniversary
in grand old style and needless to say
we stayed up later than we have for
some time in order to enjoy everything
we have here as long as possible. Our
dugout is numbered in German Deck
ung No. 49," The trenches zig-zag all
thru the woods and these dug-outs are
as thick as flees, some of them are
quite elaborate, concrete, electric lights
and telephone, miniture railroad runs
all thru the woods and the engineers
are making fine use of it.
The end of the war is quite near in
sight now, Turkey has surrendered and
we heard yesterday that Austria was to
sign the armistice also so guess it will
not be long before Germany comes
across. We have orders to make rolls
again this morning so guess We have
another hike ahead of us. | feel fine
and ready for it, put on clean under
wear and ready for anything that may
come.
hope you are keeping well and are
having as nice weather as we are here,
and you can get things ready for I'll
sure enough be home in the spring to
work around the house and garden.
Our mail is quite an uncertainty here
and it will probably be some time be-
fore hear from you, but I'll get it so
write as often as you can. Imust close
now and make my pack. Give my best
regards to everybody at home, and
don't worry about me for I'm feeling
fine and will soon be with you all.
With best regards from your loving
son.
ALFRED.
Address