|
|
Military Letters, WWI As
found in old newsletters. |
|
Updated Friday, March 05, 2010
From Thos Gerald Martin Nov. 15, 1918
Dear Mother:
I am back with the company again and found most of the boys still on the job, but some of them are missing.
We went through some hard fighting and in rainy weather. I got wounded in …….; the boys went on through. It was the …… we were fighting and there is no give up to them. Now we are camped in what was a prison camp. A captured German officer told the boys the Yankees are crazy the way they advanced through machine gun shells and everything they put against them.
I was in one big church the other day that was pretty well wrecked from shell fire. I slept in one the other night that wasn’t damaged, only the windows were shot out with rifle bullets and the Germans had taken the big bell out of the tower to use in making ammunition, I suppose.
I’ll just bet there are lots of people in the states that would give thousands of dollars to see these sights that we are anxious to get away from; bridges and towns blown to pieces. The Germans sure did a good job of blowing up railroad bridges in their retreat and the track; every other rail is blown up.
Well, there is no mail for me here, they send it back somewhere, I don’t know where, but I suppose I will get some from now on.
They say we will be home by Christmas, but I doubt it. This is a very peaceful place now to what it was only a few days ago. We are glad the war is over, but we don’t get the newspapers so I guess you know more than I do. I saw some of the boys that were in Camp Lewis in the same company I was in, go down in the Argonne battle; pretty tough.
Well, I hope I get mail soon. Keep right on writing as the mail will follow the outfit if we move.
Your loving son,
Thomas G. Martin, Pvt.
Co. C. 307 Inf. A.E.F.