Smyrna times., 1919-01-01

spite of the anti-aircraft guns, he got
away with the ranges he had taken
and in about twenty minutes, shells,
shells, and plenty of them in every di-
rection were coming over on us. The
only thing l could advise anybody to
do was to hit the ground, just as soon
as we heard her whistling in the air
and lay there until it exploded-if you
was lucky you got up and if you
wasn't you laid there. But one day
as l was coming back to our detach-
ment with some orders, noticed a
bunch of airplanes up pretty high.
Soon l heard about dozen machine
guns rattling and looking up saw that
Fritz had got mixed up with US. They
fought about fifteen minutes and one
of them was shot down in flames.
Did you ever imagine man up in the
air thousands of feet when Fritz hits
his petrol tank, death looks him
straight in the face. I'll tell you that
is heart touching. "No aviation for
mine." Both the pilot and machine
gunner were killed and burned almost
to a crisp. A little farther away Ger
man plane fell the day before. l
was walking thru there and saw them;
they were burned so bad that they Just
left them there. l took piece of the
machine for a souvenir, but l have
been too busy since then to think
about souvenirs. Our enemy, Fritz,
came across in one of his bombing
planes. Four of us We're in our dugout
when we heard someone call. We went
out. They had their searchlights look
ing for him, but he was too high guess
The next thing knew, l thought the
world was coming to an end, it
sounded like he had dropped hundred
tons of powder-everything trembled
everywhere.
Things Were Getting Very Exciting.
Things were getting exciting then.
The next move we made was to a
town upon the lines called Thiacourt.
This town was the German headquar-
ters, they had been there for four
, years and everything their own way.
At one time it surely must have been a
pretty place, but when the Americans
came in on them they got up out of
the beds and left their meals sitting
on the table, the Yanks were so close
on their heels. When our boys went
in there, they found everything the
way the Germans had left them, all
the comforts you would want at home
even nice feather beds. When we got
there the first thing we did was loOI
for some bomb proof dugouts. Luckily
for us we found them for after the
Germans had to give Thiacourt VI
they kept it under a heavy shell fire
so as our dugouts were the only mean!
for protection, we thought a lot O.
them. There was curve at the edg,
of town called Dead Mans Curve. Sew
eral of our men came near being trap
ped there, by the shells as they wer
trying to put the road out of commits
sion. But they were lucky enough t.
pull through it o. X. After all thi
came the drive that turned out to b
the end of the war. On Novembe
9th, we moved up to the lines agai
preparing to start the biggest driv
ever made. We went up and campe
just beside the support Artillery. Gee
Sleep, couldn't-nothing but tn
roar of those big ''boys" upon the hill
l everytime they fired we were lying o
the ground. They almost shook ou
heads off. After a weeks sleeping e
trying to sleep-it seemed) day brea
came at last and everything ha
e quieted down a little, we began to pr,
: pare the position we were to hol
n before our trip "over the top.