South High School - Tiger Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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f.. 1. QETQQ Vieilfditw were A DIARY FROM FRANCE Get out your maps, I'll travel fast. This is to be entitled My Ninety-six Cent Tour of the Old World. Liffol-le-Grand to Neufchateau, to Toul, to Scorcy, the first town to show signs of war, to Commercy, to St. Mihiel. You have read of the wonderful successes of the Americans at this point. To my eyes, it is incredible that our boys accomplished the gains that were made here. Can you see the picture that I saw, the enemy on top of a mountainous hill with a river separating you from the bottom of it? Well, they crossed this river, then drove the Boche off the top and miles beyond. Small towns between here and Verdun are all shot to pieces. Verdun, a prosperous city of a bit over 20,000 inhabitants, rises on a. steep hill in a bend of the Meuse River, which protects it on all sides except on the west, also faces Metz, so quite naturally is a very strategic position. Verdun! You all remember the efforts of the Boche to take this well fortified position early in 1916. They outnumbered the French possibly five to one. They failed, but succeeded in destroying nearly every building in the city. Practically all the buildings are mere shells. A fine cathedral, said to have been built in the twelfth century, is a mass of ruins. An old palace did not suffer quite so much. Some buildings are a mass of brick and stone, others have walls standing. 'Tis a typical monument to wanton destruction. Etain to the east is totally destroyed. I don't remember seeing a single building with a wall standing over one story high. The country between these two cities is a mass of hills, trenches, barbed wire entanglements, dugouts, and shell holes. Shell holes that would make good cellars for a greater part of the buildings of Minneapolis 4 The best advertised city in the world. The few people that have never visited it, that is, ofthe A. E. F., are overly anxious to grace its streets now. The Flour City soldier is some booster. The only time you hear of St. Paul over here is when the Chaplain reads the name from the Bible. Its boosters died a natural death.J Saw, just outside of Etain, the defense used, in addition to pits, against tanks. They are pillars of concrete, about ten feet in diameter, placed about six or eight feet apart and joined together with heavy steel cables. No matter how powerful the tanks were, it would be an utter impossibility for them to pass. From Etain went to Conflans, thence to Briey, to Audun. Here the Germans took our train. It was in the dead of night, so saw very little as we traveled through Esch and Luxembourg. Woke up at six as we entered Treves, or Trier, as the Huns called it. Spent the day here. It is an old town, said to be one of the oldest in Germany. A bridge built by the Romans, and an old statue said to have been built in 541 B. C., also the old buildings made the day really interesting. No one would imagine that Germany had been through four years of war, and it is a pity that they could not have had a taste of what they gave to France and Belgium. They claim shortage of greases, as soap, butter, lard, fats and oil, bread of lighter grains, leather, and some meats. These at least were the only noticeable shortages. The people all dress well, look very healthy, and don't seem to mind our intrusion. They hate 23 ' 5 f.w.' , 56 ,6 Q gpg' 15.5. :pf X . 1 ' J . ,y .',?. I H: ' ' 9 1 ,f Jqei 1 -QI-1. 55' N Eli' 'gf .vit-2 .gr -7,15 I I o EM

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,- J ., J W A it fhllx ai L It i Q H9519 Qffnde Vimidgcg Wen and couldn't locate them. So finally got his lieutenant and had him go over the ground with me. Well, we finally located them and then sent each corporal back for his squad and gun and finally got them in place by about two-thirty A. M. I put on a guard at each gun and a sentry and then let the rest of the men go to sleep after they had gotten the guns up and had brought up their ammunition. When I pulled out of the old place, I hadn't had time to take even a blanket with me. However, I did take my raincoat, and so when I came to lie down myself, I didnit even have a blanket. All of the men had blankets in their packs, and so one of my sergeants loaned me his blanket, and he crawled in with two other sergeants, which was pretty decent of him. The next morning we began to improve our posi- tion, and I had the men start dugouts for each gun and one for myself, which was to be platoon headquarters. Then I started to make a map of the land we were covering, and commenced to get myself oriented with my men. At first I had a little trouble with my men not wanting to keep their gas masks with them all the time and not wanting to wash their mess kits. I soon broke them of this. When they came up for mess, if they didn't have their mess kits clean and their gas masks with them. they got no mess. After this they were more careful. Another thing I had a little trouble with was the men exposing themselves. They wouldn't keep back out of sight in the woods, especially when a Boche plane came over. This was the hardest thing to remedy. They would insist on coming out to watch the barrage which would be put up to stop the plane. I was afraid they would give not only their own presence away but would give away the gun positions, in which case they would be put out of action immediately in case of an attack. In front of us were the in- fantry who were working like beavers to get their trenches completed. We were there to protect these men and enfilade the wire and trenches in case the Boche did get in. Well, anyway, I was king for a week. The captain would not come around sometimes for two or three days. It was surely quite an experience. At the end of the week my orders relieved me. The captain and lieutenants wanted me to get an assignment to their company, if possible. . We came back by the way of Paris and were there for the fourteenth of July, which is their holiday. They had a big parade, etc. In the afternoon I went to an opera and got a train back to the school at eight that night. I got back here this morning at about seven-thirty. I reported and found that I would be allowed to take the advanced course in machine guns. Might say that I was eighth highest in the class last course with an average of ninety-four, which is good, considering that all the others were experienced men with troops. The next course doesn't start for a week yetg so it looks as though I would have a week of leisure. When I finish that course I will feel ready to tackle almost any machine gun job. Lots of love from ' JAMES BALLENTINE. 22

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JJ L + 0 ,- MW5' --12:5-1 f- ,: W, 5 , ll X 4,41 H939 fflfige Vficcifdnfgw qlligene the French, and just wish we had stayed out of it, showing that the Hun is still unrepentant. Farther into the interior, conditions may be entirely different, but this has been deduced from my observations on this side of the Rhine. The trip from Trier to Coblenz is through a series of progressive little cities and lengthy tunnels, one near Cochem took us just 24- minutes on a freight and fourteen on a fast passenger, to pass through. In France it is the longest way around that is the shortest way home. We entered the Coblenz freight yards at midnight and found my train would not be checked until morning, so back to my bed in a blanket car I went. Slept until nine the following morning. The train was split up here and forwarded in five sections to various towns occupied by U. S. troops. Before I go further I must tell you how we eat. The quartermaster issues six days' rations, consisting of corned beef, hard bread, canned beans, canned tomatoes, and a small portion of jam. When you get hungry, you rather relish such foodstuffs, but their idea of a manis capacity is somewhat out of line with his own idea, for in three days we had to seek a bite to eat, wherever we found a kitchen with a friendly cook. There are a few, but there are so many men travelling around the way we were, and they were inclined to say Nix. I didn't go hungry. Coblenz, a busy little city on the Rhine, the old city and the new quite a con- trast: the old city, very interesting, with its unique and quaint architecture, churches, buildings of the early centuries built by the Romans, old fortresses where they held forth, have been preserved and made stronger. Both sides of the Rhine have tremendously large forts high upon their banks. They afford almost impenetrable protection from further progress up the Rhine valley. It looked good to see the Stars and Stripes waving high above. Little did the Germans think of the possibility of that happening! Other points of interest I found, as the statue of William the First, a gigantic monument placed on the point of junction of the Moselle and Rhine, the present t?D Kaiser's palace and church, where he spent his time while visiting this city, are wonderful conceptions of modern architecture. The Y. lVl. C. A. is really trying to do its bit. The festhalls, one of the places of amusement they have secured, is one of the largest auditoriums I have ever seen. They have been criticised so much, it seems they are trying to outdo all past efforts. The organization itself is founded on wonderful principles, but, in some instances, has been careless in the selection of men. The result is the reports you have received heretofore. Bud criticised them for boasting of the work they had done on the front lines, for he said, and the other boys agreed, that he had never seen one in his time at the front and had never got a thing from them, except at few sheets of paper that I had enclosed in one of my letters. for the poor Salvation Army, that had so little and made generous Red Cross, ever on the job begging you to take Everything is given away, it is not going into one NY to They are full of praise it go so far. Then the what they had to offer. pay one price for their cigarettes or chocolate, and going into another to pay twice I don't blame the organization itself, but the men that were as much, or maybe half. in charge of the smaller 24-