[Page]for the Germans, who with their observation balloons far off could not help but see us. What a shelling they gave us! Good fortune was with us. Most of the shells fell where little damage was done. Our losses were slight. At night enemy planes dropped flares trying to locate us. The French brought in a sausage balloon and located just in back of us. One day the Germans did their best to dispose of it. Shell after shell exploded near it. The observers came down in their parachutes. The balloon was pulled down. The enemy had not succeeded. The Germans had taken their position along the Vesle River where they meant to stay. Our regiment moved northward to Courville about three kilometers south of the Vesle. Our supply train took shelter in a fine woods good enough for a picnic grove, if it were not for the war. From here we supplied the dough boys with food etc. while they took their position in the lines. There was no general fighting at this time, the lines on both sides merely holding.
At Courville. At first we were left alone by Fritz, but after about a week an occasional shell came over. Several horses were killed or so badly wounded that I was obligated to shoot them to put them out of their misery. We slept in fox holes which had {made} been by others who were [Page]there before us. Here, I first contracted cooties (body lice) and these became my closest enem[ies] until after the armistice. There was considerable bombing at night. You could hear the throbbing drone of German planes, but it was impossible to tell whether they were directly above or not. Occasionally you could see the streak of a tracer bullet, like a small meteor, as the pilots were signalling to each other, together with the rat-tat-tat of their machine guns. Night air raiding was terrifying to the man on the ground, particularly to one with poor nerves. One night a shell shocked doughboy crawled into my fox hole with me while the air seemed full of planes. He proved most undesirable company. He would pray, cry, and curse almost in the same breath.I threatened to. Pleading to keep quiet did no good. I threatened to throw him out. This helped some until the planes had passed.
The Poor Horses. At the end of a comparatively unmolested week, one evening while eating our mess a shell burst just above the tree tops And then another. We knew they now had us spotted. All our men, save a few for guarding purposes, sought dug outs in the village of Courville aside of our woods. I went into a deep cellar under a church with about a dozen others. Here we[Page]stayed for the night. Toward morning the earth began to shake. A heavy bombardment was laid on our village and surroundings. Most of the men were asleep. Gas started to flow into our cellar. I went around and woke every one and made them put on their masks. It was none too soon because of some were already coughing from inhalation of the deadly stuff. I felt the effects of it for quite a while myself. As morning came the shelling ceased. We went over to see how our horses had fared in the woods. It was a sorry sight. We had lost no men but several horses lay dead literally torn to pieces. Among those horses alive, there were all degrees of wounded. Some with broken legs, some with the bowels hanging out, others with flesh wounds. Now there was no officer with us and I was Sergeant in charge. The sad lot fell upon me to put several hopelessly wounded animals out of their misery. So I shot them with a French carbine. That morning was spent burying dead horses.
⟨A Safer Woods⟩ In the afternoon we were ordered out of this deadly woods back to another woods near Arcis-le-Ponsart. Here we were on a high hill from which we could see far in all directions. Toward the south lay beautiful, now peaceful, farming country and toward the north could be seen[Page]the fires of hell. The smoke along the valley ahead indicated the front lines. Occasionally over the landscape one could see an eruption of gray smoke and dust where a shell burst. Here we were unmolested by shell fire. I slept under a large tree. The weather at this time was perfect. At night we took rations and ammunition up to the lines. This was always an uncertain adventure. The enemy methodically shelled the roads at night. At a road fork in Arcis-le-Ponsart the road a shell was dropped nightly at the same spot. This shows how accurately the Germans had spotted important road intersections. Our engineers filled the hole every in the morning only to have another one there the next. The trip to the lines and back seemed dreadfully long when it appeared as though Fritz had your every move spotted and harassed you with shells.
⟨Stallion in the Well⟩ To replace our animals of which we were woefully short, we {receive} a number little Spanish mules and old worn out French horses. Some of these were hardly worth their feed. The mules were light and not broken to our kind of work. The French horses so old and decrepit {that had} a hard time moving along without burden. A heavy wagon was almost out of the question. One old stallion could hardly keep on his feet going up and down the hill to the spring for water. Into this spring had been sunk a large barrel, making a deep