The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-01-26

0TIHE following letter from pr. Alvin
 Belden, first lieutenant in the
 medical corps. now in France, to his mother, describing the St. Mihiel drive will be read with interest, this being the third in the series.
 September Sl, In France.
 Dearest Mother: As you can imagine from last letter there were still vast number of patients up on the hill, The constant sheling made further work inn possible, but all this time our brave en- gineers were making road from the other side So next morning I went, as had a message that there were l60 pa tients. When I reached the place found the road made but some colonel from the corps issued us written order forbiding us to send ambuIances on this road as it would attract shell fire We stoically began littering cases three and a half miles over terrible road, but in the meantime, I had sent for Lieuten- ant Logsdon, who had charge of trans portation. When he beheld the situa- tion. he ordered the ambuances in, which was the only sensible thing to do, so by l a. m. all of our cases had been evacuated. We had one miraculous es- cape; we were using the former German Red Cross dugout, about one and a half blocks from the road, but to facilitate handling, our cases had been moved to the road; at night a German airplane came over and started a heavy machine gun fire over the Red Cross dugout, but fortunately no one was injured. How ever, the artillery began moving along the road and the Germans began shell fire, killing about 25 horses and a large number of men. This place has sent in fully 100 casualties from shell and gas, as they get it night and day By this time the S5sth had moved about six miles farther But their station was put on the top of mountain as high as Shade mountain; there is road leading up there, but to reach it we must cross Deaths Valley" This valley has been the scene of dozens of casualties, and l cannot say how many deaths. To get into it one must go down beastly hill where he is in constant observations however, it gets shelled day and night; it is near a little town. We first used this method: ambulances would come to town and wait. Then cases would be filtered down trail to the road and when there ambulances would run up the road and get them But in leaving there was always the perilous ascent of the long, steep hill Often we have been followed up the hill, and in those cases the car seems unable to move. Artillery fire is wonderful. Fancy a gun miles away which is able to strike with precision, almost any object, at will. Of course, the Germans know the entire topography of this place as they formally occupied it. The other night the 359th had planned an offensive, but unfortunately the Ger mans got onto their plans and when our boys started, they put over a barrage
 It was a terrible blow and annihilated two companies. If only our plans han not been discovered we would have done wonders, as their front trenches were full, who would have been caught in our barrage. They claim our wires had been tapped, which I believe they did, but their spies have supernatural ability There were so many casualties that lit tering was impractical at this distance. We just had to brave Death Valley and came up to the mountain road The one station is on the road. The other is quarter of a mile up a slushy, muddy pathway but our boys and ambulances did wonderful work, I am so proud ot them. We worked entirely under shell fire. Really, God protects us, for only