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Show 'DESCRIBES ST. MIHIEL DRIVE ,: $ 3 $ PICTURES DETAILS OF BATTLE : Graphic Story Related by j Private Who Saw Real j Action There. t . ACEAPITlt; word picture of the experiences of one American soldier in the flamiuj maw of war through w hicii the all-American all-American forces fought victoriously in The famous St. Mihiel drive, is given :in a letter just received from F'rivato i S. L. Powell, 96th company, Sixth U. S. ; marines, hv his sister-in-law, Mrs. -M. j L. Powell 2190 Lake street, this city, j Private Powell is a Salt Lake hov, and enlisted in the marines in this citv ; April 0, 1917, after having served on j the Mexican border with t he l'tah troops. He was with the marines through the chateau Thierry drive, where he was gassed with mustard ens and sent to the hospital. He went through the St. Mihiel drive unscathed, and v.as later in the battle of the Ar-gonne. Ar-gonne. where botli arms were pierced by machine gun bullets which sent hint to a base hospital in Paris, where lie was when be wrote hi letter, dated October Oc-tober 25. Since it is learned that he was discharged from the hospital November No-vember 1 aiul has again joined his company. com-pany. Private Powell's description of Ihe' St. Mihiel drive is a remarkably vivk ''close-up'-' of war as it, is in a ma.ioi offensive, and is replete with intimata details such as only a soldier who hat been through it can giA-p. Go Forward in Dark. His letter, which is probablv the first detailed description of the drive written by a soldier in the action to be pub' lished here, says: "Starting Labor day. we commenced moving up toward the front, hiking in the dark and sleeping iu the woods in daytime. The morning of the 12th wc were on the last lap, having reached, at. last, the trenches Ave were to start from just before dawn. That night had boon a nightmare to us, rain and wind with stops every few rods to let other outfits by. The road3 were packed with infantry, artillery, tanks, ammunition trains and everything it takes to make an arntA-, "At l o'ciock the night of the IHb, my battalion was marching serenely along the mad when the night's stillness still-ness was split with a deafening crash, which seemed to come from right where we stood. It was the first shot of one of tho greatest barrages of this war, and was fired from a f ourteen-inch gun about fifty yards from where I stood. Then hell broke loose. In No Man's Land. "You see, at that time I was in what is called the bark area, or with the 'heavier' From that time on we kept moving forward, passing tho 'heavies.' the heavy field artillery and then the light field artillery, until finally we were between tho two lines of fire, the Gorman on our front and our own in our rear. That's where we jumped off into No Man "s Land, a no-man 's-land that had, Avith only a few kilometers' variation, been the earnc since 1914. "That's the1 way wo started off. That barrage was one we had whispered of for months previous in the hospitals or in billets wherever we happened to be. It reached from the Swiss border to Verdun, and was to cost, os the different differ-ent stories ran, from $50,000,000 to $150,000,000. "It was a bedlam of noisc Cannons in front of us: cannons iu the rear, all sizes of projectiles whining and screaming scream-ing through the night, with shrapnel breaking in the air and the thunder of high explosive as the shells burst. Glare of Gunfire. "Behind us was the glare of gunfire, gun-fire, in front the dull, angry rod glow of high explosives. We said, 'God pitv the poor men whom we are out to get.'' and who had to stay on their posts throufth it all. And so it -continued until daylight. Tn the dull gray of early dawn Ave 'went over,' or, as wo, say. 'were up and at them.' "The barrage was changed to a rolling roll-ing one, and we infantrymen were to follow it, not too close, yon know, but if we got too far behind we would lose it and its protection. "Now, a few words concerning the terrain. We were to advance OA'er country which tho Germans bad held almost undisputed sinco the early days of the war, and where the French had lost almost an entire army without being be-ing able to dislodge the' Hun. After that the Germans felt secure, and so it Avas. as it seemed, foolish to try to drive him out. About all he bad to do was to tend his barbed wire and make himself comfortable. This ho did to such an extent that he had miles of all sorts of wire and bomb-proof dugouts fit for anyone. Some of those r went into were electric lighted. One had a piano in it. and the walls were covered Avith wallpaper. Some, alas, what? "This was the terrain we were to advance over, and we did. I could tell of the 'pioneers' who were to cut the wires, but. found this unnecessary as our artillery had mane gaps everywhere. every-where. To start with, the pioneers began be-gan their appointed task, but, as the infantry wouldn't wait for Ihem. thev asked for and were given permission to I put away thei r wire-cutters, get their rifles and go over with ti?. Hun Leads Marathon. "So. you see, every thine started off fine, and instead of the resistance we expected, we had a marathon on out-hands out-hands with Fritz in the lead, but at times he would become winded, and, as a rear guard, he would be easy meat. Of these we made prisoners of all we could, and there were ' bookoo ' (mean-1 ing many). So thinss went until wc i reached Thtavu-onrt. Later I 'Il try and tell more of this pi ace. ' "The above has been sort of a general gen-eral description of that morning. ' Now. i f yon are interested in where I Avas and what T was doing. I'll try and throw some bouquets at myself camouflage, camou-flage, vou know. "J will begin at the trenehep where we ' jumped off. ' We were a woebegone woe-begone looking bunch; that is, my battalion: bat-talion: 1 don't want to speak of aovone else. I mentioned- the rain and wind. Well, the trenches we were stationed in iiad some water in them, but that ilidn "t ma ke nnu-h difference, beaupe we were wet anyway. We were a sup- j port ' wave. It wan 't daylight yet, and we didn't have much else o do hnt reflect upon our sin?, whib I suppose mot of m did until the word was p&Fsed that the first wa v had gone nvpv about ten minute" befor. Then' PRIVATE S. L. POWELL, Nine- j ty-sixth company, Sixth United States marines, who describes his experiences ex-periences in famous St. Mihiel driye. " S " S , O 1 , - n f - f 1 1 f s- & v 1 f i C r I ; if v.'v . - ;J wc ill the supports -wondered vrhut w'c . were dohi, if we were dummies or just i out tor our morninr;-s constitution. But that didn't last lnn. Almost immediately, im-mediately, the word enmo hack, ' Kvcry-tliin" Kvcry-tliin" kroin fine; move support up,' and - so we started up iu squad formation. , About a kilometer of this and wo . formed a skirmish line again and lay in some more trenches. ''Here I'll have to drop inv battalion, because soon after that the captain called for a runner, and as I was tho nearest, 1 answered, 'Ave. ave. sir.' 'Runner, find Captain Kaufeiiburj; and his company; toll him where wo are ami ask him' to establish liaison on our right, and then we'll move up together a few points east of north,' commanded the captain. Again said 'Aye, ave, sir,' and then 1 didn't see my company again until afternoon. I found Captain Kanfenburg (J. K., but after that I couldji 't find my own captain. "You sec, things had happened so fast that our major found it necessary to move up before full liaison had been established on this now line, so when T went back tho company had gone. But, knowing that everyone was moving mov-ing forward, I went forward, too, and, as runners have almost unlimited privileges privi-leges on the field, all I- had to say when a.nyonc stopped me was, 'runner; do you know where I can find the 06th marines?' and then on I woild go. "Well. 3 guess the devil takes care of his own, because I must have passed to the left of the outfit while going through a wood, for, when I 'got uiy bearings again, I was up near the front wave. Also by this time 1 was traveling travel-ing light, as we had left our blanket-rolls blanket-rolls behind tho night before, and, the day having turned warm, I had lost my raincoat and every other loose article 1 could spare. All 1 had left was my razor, iron ration, ammunition and gun. After thinking it over a couple of minutes, min-utes, 1 decided that the company would be coming along sooner or later, and. to keep from getting lost, I had better ioin that front wave for the time being. Then, too, up there I could see a boeho once in a while. Remained in Front. "I stayed with the front wa.ve until we got to Thiaucourt, which wo took without hardly having to fight for it. In fact, the town garrison, seeing that we meant to keep coming right on, fell in in column formation all rcadv to inarch to our rear. Why, some of the officers even went to the trouble to doll up like they were going to a party or something. some-thing. "As this town was our division ob jeetive and we were hours ahead of time about forty-eight, I believe, or at least that many ahead of our artillery. I figured I had better try for my company com-pany again. So I just bummed around until it came up, though the drive did continue to the next town, which was about three kilometers further on." "During the afternoon all the company com-pany got together again, and as we had leap-frogged up until wo were about the second or third wave, we went out in front of town, whero we lay in fox holes for a eouplo of days while the artillery moved up. And so ended the first stage of the drive. "While in the fox holes we had little to do, and if it hadn't been for tho battles bat-tles iu the air it certainlv would have been dull there. "But, as it was, we had regular reserved seats; just lav on our backs and watched the aviators mix it with each other. A fox hole is an individual hole, and its size depends on. the size of the man occupying if; also on how nervous he feels. ' I have seen some fellows dig holes deep enough for a well. The main thing is to keep the. opening as small as possible, because be-cause flying shell fragments and shrapnel shrap-nel may drop in. Kept Moving Up. "While we were standing bv we never let up on the drive entirelv, but kept moving up a little and strengthening strength-ening our positions. Bv the morning I of the 19th, 1 believe it was. inv wave found itself the first wave, and awav out in front with nothing between us and Fritz but a little thin air. "We had the edge of a wood and a trench we found there. Fritz had the hill iu front of us. and there t,. were I This was our last day, as wc were relieved re-lieved that night. It was the hardest day of all. The Germans had the crest of the hill, while wc lav in the trcnche on tiie slope below them. We tried sniping, but had tn give thai u as ' every time wc started anvthing ' they would open up with their trencl, mortars, mor-tars, one-pounders and light artillcrr r heard from the French before that Fritz had listening machines j d,c form of dictaphones. I came to believe it. that .lay. for everv time we would kick aganibt a tree or a bush. tl,Cv would drop a few over just to let n's know thev knew where we were It seemed like thev could hear us if wo took a deep breath, and, as they had our range, we being in their trenches we had to lie pretty low. "That night we were relieved and hiked hack to Thiaucourt. and. though every one of u was about all in, that was on.- hike y.c didn't mind at aH Incidentally, the artillerv had got up ny this time, and the division that re lieved us went over the next morning and !ook what b had left them of their objective 'toot w-re!.' ' |