The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1919-01-02

thing, and what they did give us was
hardly fit to eat. paid as high as 75c
for a sandwich. 1t sure was lucky L
wired you for money. I STOLE bread
(and my conscience didn't hurt me a
bit, either). I picked scraps off the
floor even, and one night about 300
of us raided the bread bin, knocked out
one Britisher, and got enough to eat
for once. The captain of our company
never said a thing to us about it, even
the top sergeant was in it.
About the third day out. / didn't
care much whether had enough to
eat or not. / was sho' some seasick
boy. ..@.@. ,.:. -. ..
Well, we had but one "sub" en-
counter. One fired torpedo across
our bow one night, but missed us. You
see we went way north out of the reg
ular route to escape them, but one
night there was machine on our deck
used for hauling up the anchor, and it
started in to work and for some rea-
SON or other lot of the boys thought
it was sub or something. Anyway
there was a big rush for the stairs.
1 didn't even wake up, but heard all
about it next morning.
We landed in Liverpool, England,
on June 3rd, about 7:30 in the morn
ing. l looked around the town till
10, and I'll say this for Liverpool,
it has a great system of docks, but
it's the dirtiest, filthiest place in the
world, and I've seen some mighty
dirty place here in France and Bel
gium. / wouldn't live in Liverpool for
all of England, and if all England is
the same way, wouldn't trade a cor
ner of a sandy Horse Heaven quarter
acre for it all, but England, taken as
a whole, is clean, pretty country.
We left Liverpool about IL o'clock.
We travelled all day thru England and
got to Dover about 6 at night. / got
on loading, or rather unloading de-
tail, and got to see lot Of the docks
of Dover.
They have SOME coast defense
there all right. All over the docks
there are big guns to ward off invasion
and countless anti-aircraft guns, and
they said 1.-THE Tommies) that the high
Chalk Cliffs on each side Of the town
were lined with both anti-aircraft and
coast defense guns.
There We're big caves in the Chalk
Cliffs that must have been thousand
years old. They told us they were
used as dungeons IN olden days. Well,
now they are used as protection from
air raids. A good many civilians lived
in them, and at the time of an air raid
all the "civies" and soldiers went
there. We stayed all night at Dover
in an old, old barracks - barracks
probably used in Cromwell's time. The
next morning we left Dover and landed
in Calais, France.
Calais, is dirty little narrow-street
French town of about $4,000 popnla-
ton. We stayed at a rest camp about
four miles from there five nights and
days. We slept Is to tent and had
to just about sleep on top of each
other.
Calais has about the same protec-
ton as regards coast defense and an
ti-aircraft guns-I've seen million
shots fired by them (more or less) and
I've never seen them bring down but
three planes. r
" We moved from Calais to place
called Narkerque, about Is miles from
Calais, and 5 miles from Audrique, the
nearest town of any size.
Narkerque was small French vii
lage having little store which had
nothing to sell but figs and oranges.
You can always get oranges up around
Calais by paying from 10c to zoe each
for them. Figs you could always get
up around there fairly reasonable
as French prices go (and they always
go sky-high). There was, as I say,
one store and five "estaminets" drink
ing places in this town. That's al
ways the way with French towns
about one estaminet for every 10 in
habitants.
Earl and / got acquainted with a
French family there who could speak
a little English and we could always
get milk and coffee and once in a
while bread and butter there, because
we We're sure fed awfully poor there.
If couldn't have gotten stuff on the
outside I'd have starved to death.