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.