Keokuk High School - Comment Yearbook (Keokuk, IA)

Page 18 text:

12 THE COMMENT Well, people, I will say goodby for the present, and will proba- bly see you during the next month. Remember me to my friends and know that I am certainly anxious to get home, finish with this military game and settle down. I am, always, allectionately your son, JAMES R. NICHOLS, Captain, 320th A., U. S. A. effllfbifi at F1957 awp, . xlxg If f 33,1

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THE COMMENT 11 way to Champigneully and Lardres, St. George. On November 1, having attacked again and again, been reduced to less than 500 men per regiment, with three-fourths of their officers killed and wounded, and havingcaptured the famous Hill 223 and a number of towns, they were leap-frogged by the 80th. One of the towns, Comay, which the 82nd division men will always remember as , Bloody Comay, the Doughs took three times, and three times were driven out by the furious attacks by Prussian troopsg but the fourth time they took it they held it, and drove the Boche back from the woods encircling it. Here four captains in one regiment were killed in one morning and here my friend, Lieutenant Carl Goldsmith, of Atlanta, was killed by a bullet through the head. On crossing the Decauville railroad near there, one of our officers came across one of our men and a Boche, dead, cheek to cheek, each with his bayonet driven through the body of his opponent. The position we occupied on the night of October 5, I will never forget. The ground for half a mile was absolutely covered with dead Americans and Boche. We stumbled over them in the dark, drove over them, and worked with every ounce of strength to get in before daylight, as our infantry attacked at daybreak. Shells were filling the woods full of sneezing gas, which we paid no attention tog and, worst of all, the mud was nearly knee deep. I sometimes had sixteen horses on a carriage and about 3 a. m. our horses were so fagged out that they quit and we had to get the rest of the way by man power. We would no sooner get a carriage out of one hole than one would go into another, and some of the shell holes there were about eight feet deepg so you can imagine the job. That night I Worked like a mad man. l was down under a carriage in a hole lifting one minute, driving a team another, and making a reconnoisance another. At 4:30 I laid down in the mud for twenty minutes, turned my collar up around my neck and just relapsed for the twenty minutes. I had to, as I was so weak I felt like throwing up. At the hrst break of day we located ourselves, laid our guns, I figured my barrage, and at 6 a. m. opened up. It was a tough night, but only typical of a good many worse ones I imagine a lot of others went through 'during this show. You know for the next twenty years I imagine this scrap will be fought over around some club, cigar store, or wherever men congre- gate. It's easier to understand some of the ubeaucoup parleying we used to see some of the old G. A. R. going through, at any rate. If I bore you with this kind of stuff again, shut me off quickly. What we would all really like to do most is to forget ,it altogether.

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THE COMMENT 13 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM THE FRONT H13ADQUARTi3Rs AERO SQUADRON, October 7, 1918. I have just come back from a trip which it will take me some time to forget. I left the airdrome Saturday morning in a side car to go on a laison mission up with the divisional artillery. My ultimate ob- tive was a certain battalion of seventy-lives, with which I was to ar- range a schedule of work, as well as to talk over the whole artillery- air service situation with the General in command of the brigade and the Colonel in charge of operations. Things could not be livelier than they had been on this Verdun front since the drive started. Our work with the artillery has been fairly satisfactory, but at times there seems to be difliculty in co-operation, naturally enough. You may imagine things must work pretty smoothly when we can get the shells falling on a retreating ammunition train before it gets out of range or dropping into the midst of a battery coming up before they can get into action, or onto any of the numerous fugitive targets before the opportunity is gone. The C. O. of the group said personal contact was necessary at times to keep things going right, hence my trip. On the way up I went through and over some very famous places, including Dead Man's Hill and some of the forts to the northwest of Verdun, from which the French broke the flower of the German army in days .gone by. The roads were line for the first ten kilo- meters, but after that they got steadily worse, reconstruction going on as fast as possible with the traflic streaming by all the time. One won- ders how they keep the supplies going up over such roads, but they do somehow. Our progress was slow and painful. At that, We man- aged to go faster than most of the trailic, as We could get through smaller holes, the driver knew his business and picked the Way with good judgment. A I found Division Headquarters in a series of dug-outs recently abandoned by the Boche. The General was very glad to talk with me and we got together on several points concerning the work of the Ar- tillery Brigade and the 90th Squadron. I asked him to designate a certain battalion of seventy-fives for some special work, and he sent me to his operations officer, Colonel Welch, who had his headquar- ters in another dug-out about three miles farther to the front. As it was getting late, I saw I would never get up and back the same eve-