That noon while at lunch two more shells landed in the river, side of the dining room. It seemed as though they were following us. Later on when we turned the trucks around and ran them by camp away from the bridge, the shells began to land up at that end. That night, however, the Huns raised their guns and began to send the shells over our heads towards the railway station. All that night we would hear the whistle of the shells passing over head and the bang in the distance of their landing.
The next day we moved out of Soissons onto the “Route de Paris.” We were just outside the city and all night and most of the day it was bang, bang, bang. The Huns certainly were throwing the shells into the city, and it didn’t make you feel “in the pink,” when you had to go into it for water, and to the storehouse and railway station for supplies. All the time we were there it was “beaucoup” work. We carried a great many troops from one front to another and miles of shells. In fact it was work from then on.
After a short stay here we carried on to Villa Helon, which is about two kilometers from Longpont. This town was a gem and it certainly was tough when we had to leave. The day we left, May 28, I believe, the town roads were crowded with incoming and outgoing troops.
We moved at about midnight and the Huns gave us a farewell in the shape of a bombing. The French were setting up their famous seventy-five guns in the rear of the chateau as we pulled out. That wonderful chateau is now, no doubt, a heap of ruins.
Refugees were everywhere. Wagons loaded with their goods, people on foot, in carts, on bicycles, all moving towards Paris, crowded the roads.
From Villa Helon we pushed on to Barcy, stopping over night a couple of times at some towns. Barcy lies just outside the city of Meaux and is right where France turned the Germans back in 1914.
While in this town we carried shell after shell to those points where the heaviest fighting was going on. It was at Chateau-Thierry that we first saw the American troops in number.
What a changed Chateau-Thierry it was when the Boche were driven out! It wasn’t as badly shot up as I expected to find it, but it certainly had been mauled.