Newport daily independent., 1919-02-04

from Crawford Allen, son of MT. and Mrs. Henry Allen of Tuckerman, Ark. He is one of the first American sol diers to land in France:
 Sinzig, Germany,
 December 17th, 1918. Dear Mother:
 Received your letter of November 18th and sure was glad to hear from home. I am now where we have
 been trying to go for long time, but Kaiser Bill didn't approve of that but we showed him who was Bess.
 have been so down-hearted that I didn't feel much like writing. l have been under shell fire so long be- fore getting relief that gave up all hopes of ever making it through the war; I have been so close to my comrades when they were killed or wounded that you will call it war story when I tell you about it.
 went to the Chateau Thierry front on the 1st day of June when the
 Germans were driving and French were retreating. We stayed in one place for about four days and nights, and they took B Company up to the | line as endorsements for the ma rines. We marched along the front line nearly all night with Boche plane overhead signaling to the ar tillery as to the location of the rein forcements for the line troops. They were shelling us every step we made sometimes direct hits in our col umns inflicting loss upon us. Just before daybreak we reached the hill where we were to take up our posi- tion on the front line. 1 do not re- member the number of the hill, but 1t was called Marine woods. We dug our holes to stay in through the day, which turned out to be graves of some of the boys. On the night of the sixth I was detas...ed by my platoon leader to go on post guard in No Man's-Land. About twelve o'clock the Germans sent over terrific trench mortar and machine gun bar age. which took some more of our comrades from us. This lasted an hour and ten minutes, but it seemed like a day and a half. About an hour later the Sergeant came out to my post and informed me that l was relieved from post duty and to report to my platoon at once, which l dld' | they being ready to move down the 1 line few hundred yards and go into attack when daybreak came. Every thing was ready and the ball began l to roll. The marines were directly 1 in front of the Germans and the en-
 gineers on the right and left flank. We went forward letting out the War Whoop which frightened the Ger
 mans very much. They turned their
 machine guns on us and yelled for help. We succeeded in capturing three or four machine guns, but the call for help aroused the first llne support and about fifty machine
 p,ns were brought over the hill and
 turned loose on us, but we were too few for the number of machine guns, and after six hours battling we were forced to fall back to our old posi- tion. weak and nervous from the CT feet of the battle and the six days without food and one canteen of wa ter, which holds about one quart. Since then the marines have been warm friends of the engineers. Whenever you read about the marines YOU can also say the marines. The 5th and the 9th marines and the 9th and 23rd Infantry and Z Engineers are the line troops of the Second d. vision. the one which has borne the blunt of the U. s. share of the war
 It has done more fighting than any other outfit in France.
 The Civil War veterans have noth- ing on us because they did not have the big cannons to deal with as we have had. On the last night of the war the
 Second Engineers put bridge across inc Meuse river. It was the hottest time that ever saw. The Germans
 shot up flares and made it light as day on the spot where we were con structing the bridge and they had
 nothing to do except sit on the oppo- site bank and work their machine
 guns. but that task was like all oth- CTS for the Second Engineers-to ac-
 complish all we undertake or lose the Hast man. That is the motto ot the whole regiment, but we have paio
 pretty dear for some of these heroic
 deeds done by the regiment. Our | f1or bas or if a CrOlX Qe