"I am twenty to thirty miles behind the lines now in
a new camp going to Signal School. This camp is nothing but schools
made up of officers and non-coms. School starts April 1st,
and lasts four weeks, then I go back and report to Headquarters
Co., 127th Infantry.
"Monday we go to gas school, then one hour close drill
in the a.m., then signal school the rest of the day. Would like
to
get wireless operator with our headquarters company."
March 13, 1918.
"We are back at drill again and it seems good. We put
in five hours a day. We go down town every night from 5:30 till
10:30 p.m. There is not much to see for this is a small village
and looks like all pictures you see of French towns.
"You surely realize that there is a war over here for
nearly every man is in uniform, some have two, three, and four
medals, but with arms and legs gone. I met a French soldier
last night, where we were eating, who talks English, who was
at the front for three years. Wounded three times. He said it
was terrible at the front.
"We cannot take any kind of pictures or send any postcards
with pictures."
July 15, 1918.
"Wilbert MURPHY is in a sector on our right.
"I went down the street the other day and met George
BRODERICK. He is looking fine."
August 8, 1918.
"I hear our regiment has been cited by the French for
a mark of distinction. It is a rope braid worn over the right
or left
shoulder. It surely has something coming for the work it
has done, since taking over this sector. It has lost a lot of
good boys. I hear our division has received its relief and it
needed it, for it has been in the front lines for four months."
August 15, 1918.
"We are giving the Hun more than he is looking for and
a good many think September or October will see the end of it.
The night before last we did not get any sleep at all for
the Hun's bombing planes came over and bombed the woods, so we
had to run out in the open fields. Three of us stuck together
and ran from place to place, then, when they went back, we all
came back, and got in our tents. In an hour back they came and
kept it up all night, but thank God, they did not get our woods.
Last night a lot of the boys went out and slept in shell-holes
in the open fields."
November 25, 1918.
"I left the base hospital at Nantes three days ago,
where I have been for a month and a half. I am on my way back
to my
division, which is following up the Huns. I will copy a little
write-up that was in the Sunday paper:
"Gallant 32nd has fought 20 German Crack Divisions.
"When the American army of occupation started its march
toward the Rhine on November 19, one of our crack
Division, the 32nd, was celebrating an anniversary. Just
six months before this division first planted the American flag
on German soil in Alsace. On May 10th, Wisconsin and Michigan
men came under enemy shell fire, and from that date to November
11, the Division has out-ranged Boche guns. Only ten days after
its turn in the trenches the 32nd chased the Boche from the Oureq
to the Vesle. Then it went to a sector north of Soissons and
stormed Juvigny Plateau, fighting side by side with the heroic
"poilus" of General Mangin.
"After that victory with the French, it had a rest for
ten days before getting ready for the final drive. The American
army's
scrap was but three days old when the 32nd went in and for
the next three weeks the 32nd boys battled the Boche for the
Kriemhilde Stellung. It was they who finally broke through the
key position of 'La Dame Marie,' from which they then pushed
on to Freya Stellung, pushing the Boche gunners out of Boutheville
Wood. They carried the line up to the point where the final attack
on November 1st was launched, and followed in support of the
Division which crossed the Meuse at Dun and captured Stenay.
In the last few days of the war the 32nd went into line in the
Meuse bridge-head sector, and with the French were in the midst
of an attack, when the armistice stopped fighting. During the
war the 32nd has fought on five fronts, Alsace, The Vesle (which
was the Chateau-Thierry drive), Soissons, Argonne and Meuse,
and has fought twenty of Germany's best divisions, among them
the Prussian Guards. It has never yielded a yard of ground to
the enemy's counter attacks. This will show the people of Wisconsin,
what their boys over here have done."