Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-01-30
German Officers in the
Uniform of Frenchmen
Spied in "Y" Huts

Under shell fire and gas for three
weeks, the buildings in which he
ran his oanteen hit six times, and
nnally Knocked out by a shell which
killed four men, wounded thirty and
put him in a hospital for two
months, Guy A. Willis, Grand
Rapids lumberman, has returned on
crutches from France with some
evidence of the zeal with which Y.
NJ. G. A. canteen men worked with
the troops in The st. Mihiel and
Argonne drives.
Willis was attached to 355th Regi-
ment, seth Division. In the Toul
semtor which the division held uneil
the st. Mihiel drive began, Willis
Y. M. G. A. outfit had canteen
near Mont Sec, at Beaumont, and
one of his pleasant. jobs was to drive
almost daily around the famous
Dead Mans Curve on trips to get
supplies for his canteen. Willis en-
tered Benny, in the st. Mihiel drive,
three hours after the Germans had
been thrown out of it.
In a shell wrecked building he
found German kitchen with three
big cauldons. For several nights
he made cocoa-hundreds of gallons
a night-which was rushed in cans,
shell cases, pals and whatever else
came handy, out to the boys. Three
times shells crashed through what
was left of the roof of the building
in which the Y. NJ. C. A. had set up
shop, but they kept on at their work
and ran the canteen there for three
weeks. until they were shifted to the
Argonne.
While at Benny, Willies was busy
in the canteen one night when two
officers entered. They wore uni
forms of the 50th French Artillery.
The canteen was full of doughboys
getting cigarettes and chocolate,
and the Frenchmen, who seemed in
a great hurry, picked up several
pieces of chocolate and started to go
out. Then they hesitated and turned
back toward the counter. AS they
did SO a doughboy heard one of
them say to the other, "Wie viel?'
(How much?)
A group of eight or ten dough-
boys entered at that moment, and
in the crowding and jostling and dim
light the soldier who had heard the
remark lost sight of the officers for
a moment. When he looked for
them again they had vanished.
Headquarters. was telephoned that
spies had been in the canteen, but
the pair made good their escape in
the darkness.
In the Argonne drive Willis was
at work in first aid station when
Capt. Baker was wounded in the
barrage Willis went back through
the barrage, serving as a litter bear
er, and helped carry wounded down
through the mud for four kilometres
to the ambulances.
Two days before the last drive in
the Argonne; Willis went back into
the village of Romagne to get sup
plies for a first aid station. AS he
entered the town, the Germans
opened up on it with a battery of
S8s, and the second shell sent over
landed in the street within twenty
five feet of him. The shell killed
two soldiers on a truck, setting fire
to the gasoline tank and cremating
one of the men. Two others were
killed and thirty wounded, one of
whom was Willis, piece of steel
being driven through his foot.
The field hospital to which he
was taken had been shelled ten min
utes before he arrived, and four
hospital attendants and several en-
gineers had been wounded. A few
minutes later Some German airmen
came over and bombed the place,
one of the bombs ripping a piece of
cloth from under the head of a
doughboy two stretchers away from
the Y. M. c. A. man. The dough-
boy was not even scratched.
Willis spent two months on q cot
in the big hospital at Mesves, then
wasshipped home.