Arizona republican., 1920-09-26
'. II. FARNUM,
 Chief of Staff

By command of Major General Strong:
 F. II. FARNUM,
 Chief of Staff" l We knew nothing then of the great Argonne offensive to start the follow | ing week. News of the wonderful work of the American army in wiping 1 out the St Mihiei sector was just be- ing received with little details and We were wondering where the next big | blow would strike.
 The necessary transportation con- sisted as usual of train of those box cars entitled 40 hommes-S chevaux," 1 with one passenger coach for the train commander and other officers to go with the detachmen. Instead of being ready for entrainment at 10 a. at ! Nerondes it did not reach the yards till | late afternoon and all day the men
 were obliged to sit on their packs
 ready for immediate movement and | never knowing whether il would be 1 five minutes five hours
 The transportation papers issued by i the French railway company gave fictitious destination kitty, and until this was changed the following day by a train dispatcher at Chatillon- 1 sur-S Seine I did not know myself where
 my train was going. The actual des- l tination, given me then as Les lsletteS, IT knew to be right behind the front I lines, but I was not allowed to dlVulSe
 the destination even to the other of ficers. I made up my amind then that
 a big drive was being planned for the
 very near future
 All night the 16th, all day the 17th,
 all night the 17th, the tired men were 1 jostled along q rough road. Taking
 turns some standing up so as to make
 room for the rest to stretch out on the hard floor; then changing about. the
 nights passed miserab bly,. The soldier , knows that two days travel rations
 of
 and corned willie in those days. They
 had been duly admonished to propor-
 ton the grub so as to make it last the
 two days but the last afternoon found
 most of the cars with the eats gone
 We had been scheduled for a ''cOffee
 stop for o'clock the first night, but
 on reaching the place six hours late
 the frogs at the coffee dump were
 asleep and no coffee made. Most Of
 the men were awake and I knew they
 would be glad to have that cup of hot
 coffee. The night was chilly and the Frenchy in charge of the immense cof-
 fee kettles was not disposed to get
 his fires going and make coffee at
 o'clock in the morning. I told him that would not allow the train to move
 until we got coffee if it took three
 hours. He made the coffee when the
 Interpreter told him what I said. But that was the last coffee stop We saw. The train pulled into Les 1slette about o'clock on the morning of the 18th and, as usual, it was raining. It had been planned that we would get
 in early enough to unload and get into the woods nearby before daylight but delays of one kind and another had
 made this impossible. It was there
 fore necessary to unload one car at a time and one man at a time from each car. The immediate danger was the drawing of artillery fire to the woods
 as a result of aeroplane observation
 of the troop movement into the woods
 It took two hours to get the men into
 the woods in a stretched out single file from the train.
 With a thousand hungry men and nothing to eat it was no small job to keep them out of sight. Fortunately there was a spring in the woods which made 1t unnecessary for one one to leave to go after water. But the men could not be convinced that there was not a chance for them to get something to eat if they could get over to the j town. They had as yet never seen one of those devastated villages. Les IsIette had been pretty well shot to pieces and had been subject to almost \ daily bomb attacks. I immediately | put in a requisition for 1000 rations, but was informed of the impossibility of getting them up from the Twenty 4 eighth division ration dump before late afternoon. They came soon after 5 o'clock. All day long a drizZling rain had continued while the men were be- ing checked, counted and turned over to officers representing regiments of Il the Twenty eighth division. Most or I the men had no shelter tents lowing to a misunderstanding of orders re- k garding equipment) and had no way q of Keeping even their blankets dry. H A German plane came over our po- s sition just as I was finishing the issue \ of rations. A barrage from the anti N aircraft batteries a half mile north of \ us had failed to stop him. As he came E over us two French planes attacked \ sweeping down from the east. As he \ turned to go back over the German lines third French plane came at him from the west. The machine gun bull \ lets buzed for several minutes. but K they failed to drop him and he got s back over. This brought it home to the men more than anything we had been trying to tell them that they were ac- tually Cup at the front"
 All marching was done after dark It was after 10 o'clock that night when the infantry regiments of the Twenty \ eighth division came by on their way ' to take over the sector. Earlier in the evening I had met the French guide who was to conduct the units to the M trenches As each company came by it was halted and enough of the new \ men taken to fill to full strength N Most of the men seemed to be glat that they were at last going into