Baraboo weekly news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1912-197?, 1919-01-09
In the Battle of Argonne

Miss Mabel Geissler of Ableman has
received the following letter from her
cousin, Christ H. Haffner formerly of
Woodland, who is now in France;
Somewhere in France,
November 26, 1918
Dear Cousin Mabel:
1 will now answer your Letter which
I received a day or so ago. We are
expecting to move somewhere soon we
don't know yet whether we are going
back further or forward. I received a
letter from you dated October % and it
was the first letter that I received for
a long time Our mail had been delay
ed for a while lately and mail was a
little late in getting to us. l have
heard from nearly everyone that l re-
ceived letters from that the influenza
was pretty bad back there in the States
and perhaps it was a good thing that
SO many of us were over here. We
had some of it but not very bad. It
struck our office bunch once and they
were all sick but myself 1 was around
those that were sick great deal but
had no i'll effects Of it and in fact
hardly knew what it was till a week
or SO later Well two of our bunch
went to the hospital. l carried the
personal belongings of one of the boys
down the hill to he infirnary which
was just below us a couple hundred
yards and two days later he died. /
considered myself pretty lucky in not
getting it at all. 1t sure is bad
thing to kick off with.
In your letter you state that you
read the papers every day and that
you always watch the battle line.
Well if you do you ought to be quite
we'll acquainted with the lines and
towns through which the main battles
were fought. Now as the censorship
rules are not SO strict l will tell you
of few places where / have been and
you can look it up on your maps and
when l get home l will show you
some of my maps that l have kept of
the different places we have been.
That surely will be something which
will be very interesting for you. l
have three maps that l have kept and
hope to keep. One is of the western
part of France or l should say the
northwestern part. That is where we
were at first Then | have one of the
whole of France on which l keep the
routing of our journey through France.
Then I have still another map of the
whole of France, which is mounted
on a linen back and his is the one
which we always kept in our office to
keep tab on the advance.
Well, when we first landed in this
country, the so called sunny France,
we landed at the harbor of Brest. This
harbor lies in a beautiful little bay or
one might better say an inlet as it was
protected from the open waters by a
very narrow entrance, and runs far
back into the hills which formed the
shores of this what tourist would
call beautiful spot. When we landed
we were all pleased that we were able
about this harbor was alive with
FHritZes subs. When we landed there
we hiked to camp about three miles
from Brest. This camp had barracks,
which were very old and as most of
the buildings in this country were all
stone, the camp covered probably 20
acres and was surrounded by high
wall each corner of which had its
guard post and the gates were protect
ed by lookout posts. This was a very
interesting place indeed as it was
stated that it was an old training
place that Napoleon used, and when
I get home I will tell you some more
things about it.
=, Well, from that place we came
further north to place where we