The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-02-18
ROLAND WYNN TELLS
 INTERESTING SHAM. BATTLE IN GERMANY.
In Letter to Father He De- picts Make-Believe Talk ing of Hill on Ger
 man Soil

A letter received by W. H. Vim O. The Age Herald from his son, Sergt. Ro.
 land W. Vim. also a former employe oi
 The Age-Herald, of machine gun com. pany, 167th infantry (Rainbow) tells of ar interesting sham battle staged on Ger man soil The letter was dated at Sinzig, Germany, January F, an extract from which follows
 This morning we pulled off a sham
 battle on about as large a scale as one was ever attempted, I guess The prob- lem was this: The German army had broken the terms of the armistice and had forced a crossing of the Rhine. By the taking of certain hill they had driVen dangerous salient into our line which must be eliminated. Our First battalion, supported by the regimental machine guns, 37 mms, and Stokes nor tars, was to attack this hill, drive the enemy off into the river bottoms, where he would be at the mercy of our guns and form junction with our Second and Third battalions on the right, and the l6Sth QoWa) regiment on the left
 BARRAGE OPENED
 Promptly at 9:55 o'clock our machine guns, Stokes mortars and 37 mms opened the barrage, under cover of which the infantry swept in great khaki waves up the hill and Theoretically drove the en- emy into the valley beyond, thus crush ing forever the sneaking hope of tho German leaders for return from Elba, and incidentally demonstrating to divers and sundry generals and others of the Gold Braid club that we still knew how to turn the trick. The lessons learned when the very heavens rained fire and steel at Chateau Thierry. the CroiA Rouge, St. Mihiel, the Argonne and Metz. to say nothing of numerous minor scraps, have proven valuable, if they were costly, I say it with. I trust, par donable pride that this old regiment, from the highest officer to the most stubborn mule. is here with the goods.
 "A feature of this performance that might interest you was that there were a number of movie photographers there shooting up everything, and so per haps, before long you people back home will be sitting in comfortable theatre watching Ole Alabam' go over the top. And it will be a first-class imitation of the real thing, too, for we must have used a train load of live ammunition. I must add, also, that the natives in large numbers were interested specta- tors.
 INTERALLIED ATHLETIC MEET
 Tomorrow l am going down to Bonn to attend the interallied athletic meet There will be all kinds of sports, and 1 am sure it will be interesting. Besides that, there are many historic spots to be seen there, including the birthplace of the great Beethoven and the University of Bonn, where the Mad Mullah of Pots. dam received his inoculation of kultur, just as princes of the royal outfit had re- ceived theirs for ages past. But the stately lindens of the ancient campus no longer nod and wave to the presence of royalty (bahD for Bonn and all the coun- try whereabouts is now under dominion of the Canadian army, and Johnny Ca. muck is not near so scrupulous in his dealings with the Huns and near-Huns as the Americans On my return I shall write you about the things of interest 1 saw, but seriously l had much rather it was to old Redwood park I was bound, to seesa a genuine American game of ball. provided, it was not staged by bunch of slackers and shipyard patriots. But of this, more anon"