[Page] woodland road. On the way we saw some of the big guns in their emplacements left behind by Fritz on his retreat. These were some of those that had barked at us some days before. We found our infantry but my! what a weary, wornout, and decimated regiment. Some of the companies consisted of a squad or two only. When we begin the Argonne attack several weeks before we had at 2500 men in the regiments; now the numbers had dwindled down to about 300 fighting men. We fed them well. It was their first^real hot meal they had in all those weeks. The next day we started to ^the rear to be re-organized and sent to another front. I started off with the heavy baggage wagons through Varennes and Neuvilly. Here we found the roads {fearly} congested with traffic going up. If the German guns and airplane had opened up on us here the carnage would have been indescribable. In the early afternoon we came to a place where some colored troops working on the roads had their kitchens. We stopped here to feed and water our horses and try to get some food for ourselves. These colored boys certainly fed us royally with well prepared food. Their cooks knew to feed their men. We moved on and next came to a field hospital. Here we stopped to see if we could find some of our friends who had been wounded. We found a few of them but when we walked through the graveyard[Page]in back of the hospital we found many crosses with names of men from our regiment. We watched them bury a number of dead Americans and Germans as well. A short funeral service was read over the bodies of friend and foe alike as they were lowered in their graves. {The} were enemies no longer. They all had given their lives for their country. For them the war was over but not for us. We left somewhat heavy hearted, feeling that sooner or later some of us would go the same way in the conflict. We went on turning eastward toward St. Mihiel. We had heavy rains on the way. On the second day of our journey we crossed the beautiful Meuse River and came into the old St. Mihiel trench lines where the French had held the Germans for four years. It was a dreary spectacle. The earth was all torn up. Fields were full of barbed wire and the trees were mere wrecked stumps. The town Seicheprey was nothing but a few shattered walls with dugouts underneath. We located in a small town north of Toul. Here we received many replacements to refill our ranks. While here Capt. Braddock and Lt. Dubs our commanding officers of the Supply Co. took sick with the "flu"and day died on the same day. This left me in Command of the Company until 1st Lieut Dilworth was assigned to the[Page]job. From now on we two worked together all the time until long after the armistice. It was pleasant to work with him. We inspected the entire 109th regiment together, a job assigned to us by the brigade commander and for which we were highly commended. We were to ascertain whether they had sufficient clothing and equipment for a new campaign which was being planned. It took us a number of days to get around over a large area to all their units. He made a typewritten inventory.