The Press., 1919-02-06
HOME NEWS.
STAFFORD SPRINGS
John Levene was home from Ne

O. B. S, next Wednesday at D. m. A son was born to MT. and Mrs l Frank Vel ter at their home in Mont | vile Sunday morning.
 Miss Helen Linnell, formerly fs teacher in Willimantic spent tht l weeL end with friends here. Thomas Yare and Himie Kuslansky have been discharged from the army
 at Camp Devens and are now home. Wal~er Quinn received his discharge iron: the naval reserves at Newport
 R. l., and returned home Saturda,
 evening.
 | the Girls club went for hike last Saturday afternoon. They walked down the River road to Babcock's cro sing where they enjoyed frank for, roast and crossing to Village Hill thev returned ty way of Wilmington avenue The girls were chaperOned by Mrs. C. H. Moore and Miss Ruby Rol nson.
 The following is the program of the conc It to e given fy Woods six pieca orchestra at the annual mas querlle tall of the Teutonia associ- ation on Friday evening: March, "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morn ing," Wm Schuls; Medley Overture, "Remick's s Hits; Trombone Fantasa,
 Smoke Up;' Characteristic One-Step Georgia Land," s. B. Lewis Vera
 Waltz A. F. Lithgon One-Step, Good
 By France;" Fox Trot, II Ain't Got
 Weary Yet;" Hawaiian One-Step.
 "Hrki,' H. Berges; March, The Stars
 and Stripes Forever" Sousa.
 Thomas A. Dagle of the 56th Regt.
 First Army Arty., c. A. C., has re-
 turned from France and tells of many
 interesting things that have happened
 there. He was ill the second battle
 of Ma-ne and the second battle of the
 ArgOnne He says: When we ar-
 rived in France the French people dropped flowers along the route from luildings taken hy the Tanks of the 56th Coast Arty. Reg. as it paraded through the streets of Clermont, Fer!
 (Puy-de- -Dome). Shortly before going to the front we were three days and three nights travelling from Clermont Ferand to La Ferte, the town in which the Germans had, short while before, their big Bertha" that used to shell Paris. We detrained at La Ferte, arr irving there early ill the morning and began early the work of unloading the guns, and tractors. The tractors have caterpillar wheels and will travel any where They pulled our guns about. These guns were French, they called them 155 M. M. G. P. F. They are about six inches in diameter and
 weigh 16 tons or more. G. P. F. are the initials of the French inventor.
 The guns have range of 16 miles.
 Each battery had four of these guns,
 twenty trucks and four tractors.
 From La Ferte we moved to a town
 called Charley, which we occupied two
 days There we could hear the boom
 ing of the big guns and at night the
 sky was all lighted up. There we set
 out for Chateau-Thierry and just on the outskirts of that town we put our
 guns in position for action. Observa- tion talloons were sent up and we started firing during the night of Aug 8. It was not long before the German shells tegan to arrive. The Germans shelled us with shells ranging in size from three to ten inches. Their air. planes came over dropping bombs some of which, when they struck made holes in the earth ten to 12 feet deep. They gave us stiff fight for few days, tut we finally won out and followed them up to the Vesle river where we were relieved by the French artillery. After that the 56th, who were in the first army, were moved tc the Verdum front, 12 miles from Yer dunn, where the French halted the Germans in the early part of the wal losing about 5OO,OOO men. We had some job ahead of us. The Germans
 had been in the woods since 1914 and were heavily armed. Some of theil dugouts were 60 feet deep. At the Agonne Forest battle the light artill- cry started a half-hour ahead of us when the American drive opened there on Sept. 28, at II o'clock that night we opened up with the big guns and the ground shook with concussion You can ct we started the Huns run ming and daybreak found them in re- treat But it was more than month before we had cleared the woods ot Huns. The Argonne forest is very dense. We chased them out into the open fields where we could get look at them and there we made it hot fol them. We were up there until after the signing of the armistice, being near Sedan, a big city near the Bel gian border We would have swept
 
 tice Leen signed. On our return tC the United States. two days out from Brest, the embarkation port, the South Dakota was struck ty storm A good many of us thought we would never reach this side. Waves dashed clear over the loat which did every thing but turn over. One of the waves, at least 45 feet high, came over and smashed the pilot house, injurine the commander of the ship and some of it's officers, and losing life toats Boxing matches, moving pictures minstrel shows and music served te
 keep up the spirits of the lads of the
 Seth Some of the boys slept nights on the deck" Thomas A. pagle was discharged from Fort Schuyler Tues dav Ian 2Sth and one of the first