On the whole, I’ve been quite lucky. Some of the other boys have had some really awful experiences.
About the day after tomorrow we go en repos, and it’s sure going to seem good to eat and sleep, without getting up and sprinting for an abri or throwing one’s self, and incidentally a plate of good food, on the ground.
We saw a very interesting thing the other day. We were sitting out in front of our cantonment at the base. About a quarter of a mile from us was one of the big observation balloons or “sausages.” Suddenly, from behind a cloud, just above the balloon a Boche aeroplane darted out. The Boche and the balloonist both fired their machine guns at each other simultaneously. The aeroplane wobbled a little and started to volplane to earth. The balloon burst into flames. The observer dropped about fifty feet, and then his parachute opened and he sailed slowly down. When the Boche landed they found him dead with a bullet in his chest. It was quite an exciting sight.
A battle between two planes is quite common, and one can look up at almost any time and see the aircraft bombs bursting around some Boche thousands of feet in the air.
At last the “drive” is over, and the letter describes the prisoners, at whose youth he expresses surprise. But they are happy, though nearly starved—happy to be prisoners. The writer says:
I have seen hundreds of Boche prisoners, four thousand having been taken in the attack. We see them march past the poste-de-secours about half an hour after they have been captured. I have talked with several of them and received lots of interesting information. They are all very happy, but nearly starved. Two slightly wounded ones were brought into the post the other day. A dirty little crust of bread was lying on the ground. They both made a dive for it. They are all awfully young, mostly between seventeen and twenty-one.
One of them told me, among other things, that by next spring Germany would be absolutely finished. A soldier’s fare, he said, was one pound of poor bread and one liter of wine a day, except during a heavy attack, when they are given some thin soup. The civilians, he said, were still worse off, especially in the cities.
An Iowa boy, a Y. M. C. A. secretary, who is in the camion service in the French army, tells how he arrived in Paris, how he happened to become a soldier of France, and some other interesting details, including the amount of his salary—$1.20 per month! He found the ambulance service—which he had intended to join—crowded, and was told that there would be some delay in getting cars. Even if he did get a car he was told that the chances were against his seeing any action, as he might be attached to an inactive division. He was therefore urged to join the camion service—the ammunition truck organization—in which he was assured he would be kept busy day and night as long as he could stand it. There was no camouflage about that. In order to get into this service, one must join the French army, and after thinking the matter over for a few days the Iowa lad “joined” the French colors with a group of American college boys. Here is his letter in part as printed in Wallace’s Farmer, of Des Moines:
So here I am enrolled as a member of the French army, carrying a French gun, gas mask, and helmet, and eating French army rations. We are paid for our services the sum of $1.20 a month. We underwent a week of intensive training, being drilled in the French manual and army movements, and spending our leisure hours in building roads.