| Show allan pike writes from the battlefields of france N M letters received during the past week from allan pike give some in te resting accounts of the big drive made last month by the american and french forces against the huns in the sector which resulted in such a complete and brilliant victory tor for the allied forces well says the writer what do you think of the Ame american forces now do you ever get anything on the i first division in the newspapers it would take a good sized book to tell all that has happened but jhc biggest thing of all was that we got our first taste or rather mouthful of victory I 1 can t write much about it but I 1 hope some day to get back and tell you about the most glorious i and hardest as tar far as physical la bor is concerned days we have seen yet some of the fellows have in their possession the shoulder straps of two of the german blok guard regiments and all sorts of louven irs ira from belt buckles to shelter halves I 1 had a good chance to look over the german cannon both light and heavy and by the look looks of LT r things we have a great deal the bet bat ter guns I 1 saw more tanks than I 1 ever hough were made and all french too and also saw with plea eure seven or eight hundred prison ers era pass at different times IOU ov know german gas masks were not very numerous before so when a batch of boches went by usually some guy would go out and ask for a gas mask the germans were free with them all right they always handed them right over both the french and germans fight full pac pad and with an overcoat on think ff an overcoat on a hot july dai the first thing the boche prisoners throw away is their helmet the next Is the overcoat and next the gas mask most of the boches doches are scrawny fel lows either very young or middle aged though a few of them were as fine a bunch as I 1 have ever seen I 1 saw a few on the battlefield who when alive were surely well built men but the general average isn t very good we t have man casualties considering the open country we had to fight in for it was all open coun try very few trees just level 1 stretches of grain fields and we had to keep moving position positions all thel the t time going ahead to keep up with tie tl e doughboys who were raising hell with them the boche left every thing he had behind hand grenades ammunition guns powder everything including about three fourths of his men and very few of them PH boners at that we and the french were together and from what I 1 saw and counted the ditch last heavily compared to our losses well we have been the busiest foldats in france up till about a week ago on the move most of the time and always in the open I 1 lost my pack that Is my blanket roll with TOV mv towel and pillow but I 1 managed to keep my gun belt and saddle pockets and most of the oth er things I 1 need to fill out my equip I 1 picked up on the battlefield we got badough boche souvenirs too for a while we could have any thing from german heavy artillery to the best of personal equipment all we had to do was to take it of course we couldn coulden t lug around a bunch of junk so we left most of it alone the news that arthur sullivan a school schoolmate mate of the writer had been killed in action had not reached mr pike at the time his letter was writ ten and he bays says the regiment ar thur sullivan la is in Is about seven kilos from here and I 1 am and have been trying to locate himi IOU oi can tell that his regiments Is one of the famous ones already the rainy season is almost here again and that Is the worst of it but the weather is great now and ev feel terig fine we b haven t much time to write as we ar are kept busy doing something all day long and it is dark now and I 1 must close as I 1 can hardly see the paper but we have given the dutchmen some thing to worry over and something they won t soon forget and the best of it is it Is only a sample of what he is going to get alan allan pike is a graduate of the tintic gintic high school and a son of mr and mrs edward pike of this city I 1 lie ile enlisted in the artillery branch of the service immediately after the declaration of war and has been in french with other tintic gintic boys since august 1917 he ile has the distine tion of being one of the first and per haps the youngest utah boy to see I 1 service on the firing line tepa I 1 A bond for every member of the family |
