Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-12-22 | Page 7 | Salt Laker Tells of Year's Fighting

SALT LAKER TELLS OF rEfSjIGHIG Sergeant W. W. Morgan Gives Vivid Description of First Engagement. Giving a resume of the activities of ii.s company, of the first division to land in France, until he was wounded at Soissor.s, Sergeant W. W. Morgan, son of J. . Morgan, 44 East First South street, writes an interesting letter to his father. After several weeks in a hospital Ser-; Ser-; gecnt Morgan took part in the first day's i fighting at St. Mihiel, but then was ordered or-dered to school. He is a member of II company. 331st infantry. His It Iter is : "Wo landed at St. Naz.irc June '. HM 7, the first division to rem-h this country. We trained under French supervision sup-ervision until October, when the tirst American soldiers went into the trenches. "That was a very 'soft' place, I havo found out since, for we lost only three men from my company. We came out of the Nancy sector in November and trained agnin until January, v hen we took over the American sector at Toul, where we remained until last March, and believe me. i was cold. "It wns there I got my first clianc.i at the Dutchmen, and there we hud our first fight with the boche and licked them to a finish. On March 1 an officer from battalion headquarters stated (hut h show would be staged in the morning. The company officers put us noncomi wise. "When day dawned the frost was a half-inch deep on the wire and it wj.9 so cold we were compelled to keep moving. mov-ing. As it became sufficiently light fo see a few feet Fritz opened with his artillery. It was some barrage, lasting about one and one-half hours and sot tied behind our front line, "Fritz came over to call. There were many callers, but only . a few of us left in that line to receive them. But our reception was a warm one. The enemy broke our lines on both sides of my company and came down behind us and for about twenty minutes were completely com-pletely surrounded. Rut the fun became too warm for thorn and th'.y ran for it. "Our heavy guns were tearing up their trenches and our light guns were covering cover-ing no man's land pretty well. We had two automatic rifles working- upon Fritz, besides tho arms of the individual men, and his losses were great. We lost a few men from our support line and about half the men in the front line, but we got at lenst three of the Dutch for each of our soldiers. "They had to relieve my company that night as all the officers were killed or wounded, and wo had nothing to e;it and no sleep all our dugouts were blown up. So they sent In a reserve company com-pany to take our place and I had to stay two days with that'unit to show the men around and guide the lieutenant until ho became famillnr with tho sector, t hated that two days worse than all the winter I had put in. "My division had been relieved only two days when tho German pressure oil the British became too great and we were sent into the line ft Montdidler, Th French relieved the British there and wo relieved the French. We were seventy-two days in that place and it was a hell from the time we went in until we went out. Seventy-two davs under &heU fire is a long time and It was there we mado the attack upon Cantignv. "We. made good there and received two citations, from a French officer and General Pershing-. We had earned a rsi 1 and were out of the trenches twelve days. "We were sent into the lino at Soissons as part of the troops which started the downfall of the kaiser, Julv 18. I wns six weeks in a hospital from being in that fight, but it was worth it. There were fo many guns shooting I heard lhm two weeks afterward. The ground was fairly shaking from the explosions of shell. , "On returning to my company from tho hospital we were ready to go over at St.. Mihiel, and I saw the first dav of that. Then I rerieved orders from general gen-eral heiuiquarters to attend school I missed all tho fight In the Argonno ami wound up in the -,1.Hsl infantrva regular in the rrticnal army. Can vdu beat it"'