The Republican journal., 1919-01-30
A Letter from Eugene Cannon
Written to His Grandfather, Mr.. Thomas
Cannon of This City.
Dec. IA. 1913


Somewhere in Germany
Dear Grandpa:
suppose now that the war is over
everybody at home is happy and things
will soon be back in the old way as be-
lore the war, without any wheatless and
meatless days and gasless Sundays.
| They have kept US on the Jump most of
the time since the armistlce went into
effect Nov. II and we have hiked over a
good bit of territory. | guess | wrote
| before that we were in position at Loppy,
little town about is kiometers north of
Dun-Su Meuse. when the war stopped.
We have been on the road ever since
then, but we expect to stay in this little
town now until after Xmas anyway.
Speaking of the Meuse river reminds
me of the day we crossed, the D Bat. of
the 10th was the first Battery OF Artillery
to cross the river at Dun, the Bosch aero
planes had been constantly dropping
bombs trying to get the pontoon bridge,
but without any success. Just as | was
running telephone line across the bridge
Bosch plane came swooping down and
dropped basket full of bombs One hit
about Is yards from me and killed horse
and one man, but none of them hit the
bridge.
We have one thing tc be thankful for
and that is that we are not fighting there
this winter It is bad enough in the sum-
mer. Of course we would all have liked
to have been home for Xmas, but feel
sure we will be on our way back in Two
or three months
| will try and tell you the places we
have gone thru since Loppy. Nov. 13
we pulled out from Loppy, went back to
Dun and followed the Meuse down to
Verdun q was there two days ahead
of the outfit and so had a chance to
look over the city. 1t is shot pretty
bad in places. From there we went
down near st. Michel, then north thru
Contlaus and our next stop for a few
days was Briey. CYou see we had to
travel in battle formation with the In
fantry in front ETC., so that we had to
cover a lot of ground that would have
been unnecessary if we had taken a di-
rect route) Then we hiked thru Lou
raine into Luxembourg and stopped at
Mondorf which is about Is kilos from the
city of Luxembourg After resting for
about five days here, we Travelled north
east thru Luxembourg and crossed the
Moselle River at Renich into Rineland,
Germany. You should have seen the
hills we had to climb going thru this part
of the country. We went over one hill 7
kilometres long (about 1-2 miles, be-
heve me we were glad to get away from
those hills. The next river we crossed
was the Saar river at Saarburg, then we
struck across Rhineand and caught our
first view of the Rhine River at St.
Gouer Dec. 18th just one month from
the time we started.
After spending two days at St GoueI
we travelled north along the west bank of
the river and reached Coblenz that night,
making the distance which is about 80
kilos. There are many old ruins of old
castles on both sides of the Rhine. |
which | will send home soon. Cobenz is
quite a large town with population Of
about 1000 ] believe. | would liked to
have stayed there little longer, but we
only stopped over one night and then
came to our present location which is
about 80 kilometers west. | haven't found
the name of the place yet, but expect to
soon.
They have just established Y. NJ e.
A. and we will have plenty of candy,
smokes, ETC., for Christmas. | doubt if
our Xmas boxes sent from home will be
here in time, but we are in hopes OF get
ting little first class mail any way.
Yesterday l received about parcels of
papers with from Grandpa" written in
the upper left hand corner Believe me
l appreciate them as reading matter is
pretty scarce here
Will close now with love to all, hoping
to be able to celebrate my birthday with
the folks at home, l am,
Your loving Grandson,
EUGENE.