Return to the Land

trenches for 16 days the rats and cooties [lice] were the closest and best friends that we could depend upon to keep us vigilant in our dogmatic spirit. We had wires from our dugouts to guide our safety to and from our posts of mass slaughter and hell as we called it. Our scenery was lighted with flares and bursting shells all night long, and still I wondered why the war would not stop, but I tried to endure the hardships as much as possible - so finally I broke down in the trenches with the Spanish Influenza which was dreaded more that the great World War. So one morning when we had trench raid I got so weak that I could not stand any longer so I fell up against the parapet of the trench and told my sergeant that I was finished in the trenches so they felt sorry for me – helped me to get to my post where I could sit down, I had a fever of 103˚ so the captain had an ambulance to carry me back to the field hospital, this hospital was tents put up in a swamp so the ward master put me on the ground so I pleaded so hard for him to give me a bunk if possible – for I had realized my grave condition - so one of the poor boys died and I took his bunk, but not ? the poor dying boy his bunk. But I certainly did appreciate it very much of the young boy getting me the bunk, so I stayed here for 15 days a part of the time was delirious and did not improve very fast. I was getting disheartened - begged the doctor to send me back to my Co. - so he told me to stick around a few days longer - I did so and he sent me back to the base hospital at ? here I stayed 15 more days improving very slowly, finally we had our final physical examination and were sent back to our companies located at Metz and Verdun on the Meuse Argonne Forest, and in the last town by the name of Manheules – we were in a 36 hour drive – through a very heavy barrage of bursting shells and machine gun fire – the field was very level with shell holes every 15 and 20 feet apart and full of water but it was a great pleasure to break the ice - and get in the barbed wire was very thick and the flanks but we went through. The last two towns that we took had been shelled flat to the ground so the Armistice overtook us here in this place so we slept in the German dugouts and we found the German [lice] a great nuisance to us. We guarded the front until Nov. 16 th , at noon so we left the front with full packs and not knowing we started on a 200 hundred mile march – finished the hike Dec 4 th (ye who reads, please lend me your sympathy) in Autricourt, France, here we rested and drilled daily until a few days before Christmas – I was granted a pass to Aix-Les-Bains on the Italian border, and in the Alpine Highland. Here I spent a wonderful vacation – plenty to eat and a good bed to sleep in – the only bed that I had slept in for 8 months. Here I visited Mt. Revard – a very high peak of the Alps, the Gorges of Sicroz, Lake Bourget, Hannibal’s Pass - way across the Alps- also Hannibal’s Hotel, the Cat’s Tooth, the Grottoes, an Eye scene of Mt. Blanche, the City Hall, an old Roman Bathhouse - 122 years before Christ’s time - and a great many other scenes that I will not undertake to describe. When a few months later got a pass to the beautiful city of Paris.

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