Norwich bulletin., 1920-04-29

Joseph s. Huntington, familiarity | known as Uncle Joe Huntington of Old | Lyme, who served with the boys in l France and on the Italian front for two years as r.. M. c. A. secretary 1 was the speaker at the weekly luncheon of the Norwich Rotary held at the Wau- regan hotel on Wednesday. Uncle Joe, | himself, claims to be no speaker, but, after hearing him talk, the Rotarians are forced to disagree with him on this point for he proved one of the most entertaining after dinner speakers we have ever heard.
 Uncle Joe told of his experiences overseas mingling many humorous in- cidents with his talk He said he was the oldest in the Y. M c. A. service and had been decorated once. He left this countrl for France early in January, 1918. Nang first to St. Nazaire. When I entered the service, Uncle Joe said they
 asked me if I could lead prayer meet
 ing. I told them | didn't know what
 the result would be but I would lead all right When I got to France I held
 my first prayer meeting. I had never prayer in public so I went out to an old friend a clergyman, and asked him ! if he would pray for me. He looked | at me a moment and said What have i you been doing npw?"
 l Things went fine at St. Nazaire where l I stayed for a number of months, then was transferred to another camp. The
 resources were limited here to work with and I did most of all my own work.
 was eating then at the French officers
 mess. It was during the second great | drive of the Germans toward Paris and l everyone was pretty downhearted as the i Hun was almost to the Paris gates. Paris, you know, is France to the | Frenchman and if Paris had fallen the
 war would have been over. One day as i I entered the mess hall the French cook | rushed to me, shook my hand and kissed me, the officers did the same when | entered the room. I did not know what l it was all about until one of the officers showed me an account of the stand
 made by the Americans at Chateau Thierry. The officers said they did not | know that the Americans could fight, they knew they were great engineers but | thought that a soldier could not be made in two months I told them if they had just found it out the little demonstration that I had received could have happened long time before for
 I could have told them what Americans could do. l. I want to say here that although Italy was not given much notice in the press she had 250, ,000 men fighting on 6OOeA
 work At this time the morale in Italy
 was low and with the 332nd regiment, a
 draft regiment of westerners, and I think
 the finest in the army was sent to
 brace up the Italians. It was done just to show the Italian people that. we
 were with them. When we arrived at
 Milan we were greeted with a tremen- dous celebration, the streets were strewn
 with flowers and we immediately became
 extremely popular.
 With the "hard-boiled bunch" as ]
 called the regiment we went to the Pi-
 ave front. The Austrians were on one
 side of the river and we the other Our
 breastworks were the old dikes that
 kept the Piave from mingling with hu- | manity. The~worl1 here was light, there was no night work my hut was
 only about a milo behind the lines and the Austrians had habit of coming
 over with an air raid about once 8
 week. They never did much damage r however. The artillery fire was con tiruous. The Austrians apparently were afraid of the Americans for they would not fire upon them unless we fir I ed upon them. have known Ameri
 cans go bathing in the river in plair . daylight and not shot being fired al f them by the Austrians We stayed hert $ until the big drive across the Pfave. A:
 we had no engineers with us the 6tf .. battalian and 10th battalion threw pom , toon bridges across the river and over I we went driving the Austrians before
 us. The drive was simply a hike anC
 the Americans could certainly hike , They were the third over the Piave, bu
 when the reached the Italamento rive , we were leading. We crossed this rive . under machine gun fire and started fo : the eastern part of Germany Then tn n Austrians gave up the fight and signe, i, the armstice Then we had free, reil o and a through passage to the German . territory. But we never got there be n cause the Germans also signed tn 5 armistice. The idea of the allies wa = to go in and burn up Germany and . think every man had his pocket full o = matches to do it.
 |. I have been asked if we celebrated ,, We did But the language used was 0 a a nature that is condemned by Hol = | Writ. We were sore because we want 2 ed to go through with it. When I te e you that there were million men 0 i. that front waiting to go in you can SC II how much chance Germany had It i i impossible to say which nation won tn y war, but it is certain that Italy deserve |, great credit for breaking through tn = Austrian front.
 : We were then sent to the souther
 part of Italy for one week as they tol Il us, but we stayed there all winter. l. was here that I had my first acciden J. breaking both ankles and several rib
 I was in hospital for some time unt . they moved the hospital and I had t
 get jack-knife and cut the plaster cast