Weekly journal-miner., 1919-01-01
WILLIAM HUGHES REAL CHUMMY
 WITH COOTIES
LOCAL DOUGHBOY WHO WAS WOUNDED IN HOT
 EIGHT ON ST. MIHIEL FRONT, SAYS LITTLE PETS ARE NUMEROUS. !,
(From Fridays Daily)

PrlVate William Hughes who
 writes to his mother in this city un-
 der the date of October 3Oth from
 France, has the following interesting
 things to say regarding army life
 overseas:
 q suppose you people back home
 will be wondering why my letters of
 late have been so few and far be-
 tween, but I have been right up at
 the front during the past few weeks
 and our opportunity for writing has
 been very much limited. 1 nave nev-
 CT given you an intimation regarding
 the. location of our company nor the
 character of the duties We had to per
 form, but now that the war seems
 to be about over and with the Huns
 on the run out of Belgium, I'll say that some of the things we have had
 to go through with were similar to those which caused the late General
 Sherman to characterize war as hell
 'In the first place, I am just alive with cooties, but will soon have
 chance to take bath and get into
 clean clothes and then maybe I can get little bit of peace. Have had to
 sleep in all kinds of places, and it is very little sunshine or dry weather we have here just now. We cannot have any lights at night and at some places we cannot even smoke at night because of the fact that the enemy aerial observers might see the light and drop bombs on us or get our range and let go with their artillery, and in that event things sure get in teresting If shell is fired so that it strikes the earth several hundred feet away from Us, we can hear them coming and can ordinarily make our selves pretty safe from the effects of the resultant explosion, but if they happen to fall with 50 yards of our stations, they drop so suddenly that we can hear them but a second or two before they explode, and unless we are very quick in dropping into a shell hole that happens to be handy, We are liable to be quite out of luck A shell recently tore off the corner of an old building in which I was sleeping, but fortunately I was not hit by the flying shrapnel, the latter being of all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some of the shells are filled with small round projectiles about the size of marble, and other shells are merely filled with a high ex- plosive which tears the shell into a million pieces when it explodes.
 "When I get home I probably won't want to sleep in bed and will want nice hole dug out in the gar len as a roasting place. haven't lad my clothes off since the middle of September Another thing-we lever hear of miles over here, every hing is kilometers, a kilometer being bout 5s of a mile"
 In letter dated November 18th, Billy tells of how he was slightly and says:
 T am still alright but the other lay we had an awful close call. There were five of us going down the road when the Huns put five shells right nto the bunch of us. I was the 'nly one hit, small piece of snrap- lel striking me in the back of the lead and making a bad gash which did not trouble me very ong. l could have gone to the hos ital on the strength of it. but did ot want to waste that much time.
 I wish you could have seen the oys on the night of November 10th, he time we heard that the war would e over the following day at II clock. w had heard similar reports 0 many times before, however, and idn't hardly believe it this time ither, but were somewhat excited. he next day at Il o'clock all the big uns quit barking, but still we were Septical and continued to ask each ther If the was war really over. We | prayed that it had ended. I don't ant to stay here any longer than is ecessary, but still when think how 'rtunate I was to come through all this trouble without losing my life,
 will hardly feel like kicking if I ave to remain here for a few months ore.
 Well, I can hardly write for hay g to stop and catch cooties. Have und several of them that have serv- e stripes. The cooties don't treat Q as gently as they do some of the flows, but one gang will start at y ankles and another bunch at my 'ck and work towards the middle agging their feet as they go. Tell