True Stories of the Great War, Volume 1 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 1 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
We carried quite a few German wounded yesterday and it is very
interesting to hear their ideas about things in general. Most of them
seem to be in great perplexity about why we declared war. Some of them
seem like mere boys and others quite old, but then that holds for all
armies.
It is almost a month since I heard from America, but then I know how
busy you all must be with the moving. Please tell Tom that the second
package of tobacco has come and I am ever so grateful. I lost my
passport but have another. I had to have new pictures taken and walked
all over Paris on a hot day to find a place, hence the expression.
VI--STORY OF HOW PERSHING SAW THE GERMANS ATTACK
(Told by J. Welling Lane, with American Ambulance)
_The writer of this letter, J. Welling Lane, left his place with the
banking firm of Montgomery, Clothier & Tyler, 14 Wall street, New
York, in April, 1917, to go to France with the American Ambulance. He
had served on the Mexican border with the First Field Artillery._
France, Aug. 23, 1917.
DEAR ----:
Well, old man, I can certainly tell of some real experiences now. The
latest: Last night we had an air raid, beginning around 9 o'clock,
when the Boche came over and dropped some bombs, trying for some gun
positions near here, then at exactly 12:30 A.M. a big raid.
There must have been at least five machines or more came flying very
low and dropped a bomb within twelve feet of our barracks, wounding one
of the boys who slept in the corner nearest the bomb in the bottom of
his heel. He will be all right soon, but will take quite some time to
recover.
It is a wonder to all he did not get it anywhere else. I drove him to
the hospital with our Lieutenant and waited until they extracted the
eclat, and am keeping it for him. It went through the wooden wall,
through the blankets and carried a piece of blanket into the wound.
Then another of the fellows lying opposite received a hard scratch, but
only a scalp wound.
Our Brigadier, or Quartermaster, who keeps tires, etc., was sleeping
in a little shed within seven feet of the hit, and when we all rushed
over we heard him groaning, and I broke in the door to find him on the
floor. He was hit in three places, a long piece in his side and one
little piece piercing his backbone. He is dead now. Our barracks is
riddled with holes from the eclat. The hole is about three feet deep
and very narrow, the eclat spreading in all directions. There were all
told eight bombs dropped around us.
Sept. 26, 1917.
One did not explode and can be seen in the ground near a stable. If
it had exploded it would have no doubt killed many horses. That was a
pretty close call for all of us, no doubt being brought on by the new
gun position. One of the guns, by the way, was the one that silenced
the German gun that used to shell Dunkirk, being able to shell twenty
to twenty-five miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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