The Coconino sun., 1919-04-11
COLLIS MAYFLOWER
 WRITES FROM FRANCE

from france comes long and ln- teresting letter to John Sheehan from an old Flagstaff boy, Colis s. May. flower. Mayflower was saw filler at the Flagstaff Lumber and Timber Co.,, before enlisting some eight or nine months ago. Extracts from his let ter follow:
 Dear Friend John:
 After so long time l am going to write you letter in answer to two have received recently from you, that nave caught up since 1 have settled down. We have travelled around a great deal since we arrived on this side as all our troops have done. To start with, we left New York on Oct. 18th, Liberty Loan Day. We left Camp Dix at midnight and arrived at the Pennsylvania station at about 2 in the morning; got on ferry there and went across to Pier 5S; through big warehouse where a lot of Red Cross people gave us rolls and coffee, and then on to the boat. the Ceramic" an old freighter converted into a troop ship by the English. It was fair sized ship and had about 2,5OO men on board.
 President Wilson was in New York on the day we sailed on account of the Liberty Loan, and the streets were decorated with bunting as on the 4th of July. Also good many airplanes were up, sometimes twenty-five to thirty at time, and one big bomb. ing plane. We had about fourteen boats in our convoy, also battleships and torpedo boat destroyers as an es- cort. We had pretty nice weather all the way over. only a little rain ! once or twice, and was only seasick for few minutes one evening, caused by eating some English broth, I be lieve.
 We did not see any subs, only just before we reached England we struck mine field, some supposed to have been placed there the night before, for English sub destroyers claimed to have policed up the coast there and cleane,l up all the loose mines just the day before, knowing the convoy was com ing. About twenty-four sub destroy CTS met us there too, for the spot was the acute sub zone off the coast of Ireland, and escorted us into Liverpool on the 24th of October.
 We stayed in Liverpool couple of days, then crossed to Southampton and in the night crossed the English chan nel and landed at Cherbourg. The trip through England took us about a week and we had chance to see some of it that I will tell you of when get home. From Cherbourg we went to Le Mans, France, and turned south for Italy, but were turned back, ow- ing to Austria's withdrawal from the war, we understood. When we reached Le Mans again we were split up as an organization and sent to machine gun school at Mayet. I was assigned to new battalion, the 323d, and after the armistice was signed, pulled out of the outfit for detached service, and am at that now. Am with the mil;- tary police at La Bazoge, little place near Le Mans. We have it easy there are ten of us. We have a stove and plenty of coal furnished us and also cots to sleep on and good billet, as good as any barrack camp in the states A good deal of the day is our own, our duties calling us out on the streets for little while in the evening to see that the soldiers do not destroy any French property unduly. Le Mans is place of about 10000 inhabitants and is sort of American troop center, especially now, for 90 per cent of the American troops on their way home will stop in this area