He told me about how, against his will, he was dragged in and made to
fight for Prussianism when he always believed in democracy. It almost
brought tears to my eyes to listen to his story about the people who
were wishing that the Kaiser and the Teutonic power would be killed,
instead of taking every young fellow against his will and making him
fight. I soon recovered, bid this boy good-bye, and moved on to the
second division, who were still occupying Flanders Front.
One day while wading through mud, a big shell exploded in front of us
and we lost a great number of men, and I fell into the shell crater
with nine other men. The crater must have been forty feet deep, with
about three feet of mud at the surface. Here we did not eat for five
days. We had to drink the green slime and mud so that we might not
perish from thirst. Every time we wanted to sleep we would fall in this
mud and wake up all caked with it. We were finally rescued by a French
patrol party, and given plenty of food and nourishment to put us on our
feet again. We were sent to a convalescent camp, and told to do nothing
but rest. After resting for a month I was again placed in position with
our snipers, with Private Al Barker as my companion. I at once took
position in the limbs of a tree, so that I could notice any patrols
that might pass. On our southern corner we saw a raiding party of
Germans, fixing their machine guns to clean up a town called St. Forme.
We immediately opened fire on these men, and succeeded in picking off
a large majority of them. Suddenly my comrade received a wound in the
knee and fell to the ground. I descended and, picking him up, carried
him safely to our lines, receiving at the same time three bullet wounds.
We were sent to Base Hospital No. 16, where we were operated on. It
seemed as though it was a year before we were well. Finally we were
sent to the front at Belleau Woods. This place was approximately the
turning point of the war. It is situated thirty-eight miles from Paris,
and the Crown Prince's army were trying to advance through it. Here for
forty-eight hours we were continually on the alert, always watching the
Germans. We did not eat for forty hours.
On the 18th of July at 12.03 A.M. we received the call to arms. We
were ordered to advance to the Forest of Père where a great number of
Germans were operating. We traveled seven and a half miles on foot and
placed ourselves on the southeastern part of Chateau-Thierry. We opened
fire immediately, and this is where the bloodiest encounter of our
service took place. We succeeded in starving our opponents and cut off
all their ammunition. It was a big disaster to us as they outnumbered
us four to one. After the British had been thrown back, the marines
took the field and succeeded in annihilating the Crown Prince's army.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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