The evening leader., 1918-11-29

will surely come and l know l shall
feel more intensely than ever the
deaths of these many, many friends of
mine who have so nobly paid the su-
preme price for the liberation and
freedom of the world. In one in
stance during the five days battle
around st. Mihiel, when we Ameri-
cans wiped out that large salient, I
had one of my best boys knocked off
while he was lying right close to me,
and he said just before he died: Lieu
tenant, help poor Williams, there; he
needs it more than l dov He did not
know that his pal, and another of my
best men, had had his head blown
completely off by the same shell.
That's the kind of men we've got in
our army everywhere, dear sister, and
that's why we are giving those Ger
mans such 'unstandable' hell all along
the line.
when l joined the army I had the
intense desire to come over to France
and get into the fight from start to
finish and if am fortunate enough to
finish up these last few weeks of it
without getting bumped off, I can al
ways say with satisfaction that I have
had my every wish and desire fulfill
ed. In these six months abroad have
experienced everything that l have
ever read about and thanks to His
guiding hand, | am still here to tell
about 1t. | have had the privilege of
being in the trenches when the Ger
mans made vicious attack upon us
at daybreak one morning. have been
through gas attack put over on us
one night at midnight Il was caught
by it, too); I have slept in rain and
mud many, many nights; I have hiked
seventy-fve miles on foot through five
nights of drizzling rain and slop in or
der to make an attack; I have been
over the top ten or twelve times al
ready and have seen hundreds, yes
thousands, of frightened Dutchmen
with their hands UP in the air yelling
'Kamerad! as we bore swiftly down
upon them. I have enjoyed the happy
privilege of capturing many of them
in connection with the men of my
command, and, best of all, have seen
two with my own eyes fall dead from
the hire of my own gun. I have
scrambled through interminable mass
es OF German barbed wire and pressed
on and on for as much as nine miles
in one days fighting, and most thrill
ing of all, have fought my way
through one, two, three, and many
more curtains of fire. that you have
no doubt read about, and on the other
hand l have advanced under the same
kind of fire curtains when we were
going over after the boches.
Il have been completely surrounded
tby Germans at one time and was quite
lcertain for while that my time had
come for sure, but we outnumbered
them SO heavily that we broke
through their circle and freed our
selves. I lost some good men doing
Iit, though. | have experienced life in
these French 'billets' that / used to
read about with such funny ideas and
have trod many weary times the
long, long trail that leads from those
same rest billets up to the trenches,
where mud, rats, 'kooties' and bullets
ever reign supreme.
81 have also been far behind the
lines at times and leaving the front
with its thrills and experiences be-
hind. I can boast that I have enjoyed
a few days of rapture in that dream
city of Paris, where the women are as
beautiful and as gay as ever in spite
of the war, and where the most beau
tiful gardens and boulevards, theatres
and hotels, palaces and castles in all
the world are to be found. I have
eaten and visited in some of the best
L. nave ScSH tllOuSdIIuS VI
beautiful little French children in all
parts of France where I have been,
and I have claimed them all for my
own. have learned to speak French
to a surprising degree of adaptability
and hence have almost doubled the
lpleasure of my sojourning amongst
these people who invariably adore an
American who. can 'parlez-vous.'
II have been from the borders of
Switzerland up the entire fighting line
to far above Paris, and l know the
country here now almost as we'll as a
native. In fact, dear sister, I have
seen and experienced it all and now as
a wanderer will always say, It's all
fair and good in its way, but give me