TRANSCRIBED FROM THE COURIER-INDEX MAY 3, 1918 P. 1
I would like very much indeed to tell you about my trip, location and the army, but strict censorship forbids, and you must be content with the less interesting.
I think when God made this section of earth he smiled, for it is very, very beautiful. Words are inadequate to describe it. You must draw upon your imagination. Have not seen a worn out or discarded piece of land yet, and it has been in cultivation for hundreds and hundreds of years. The soil is constantly being replenished and not allowed to waste. Something, it seems, is kept growing all the time. Intensive instead of expensive farming is the rule.
Everyone lives in town-no country people. Small villages are found every few kilometers. About six or eight towns in a radius of five miles from this place. The people live this way for two reasons I suppose- have more land to cultivate, and for mutual protection.
The homes are more like forts than houses. Made of heavy stone, very thick walls, not over one window to a room and very poorly ventilated, in fact fresh air is an unknown quantity and sanitation- well, it is not in their dictionary. No wonder the death rate is high and tuberculosis seems to be the prevailing disease. This is the way I am finding it in country towns.
Everything is antique, and am beginning to feel a little aged myself. The town in which I am billeted must be fifteen hundred years old-it cannot rot or burn down and no doubt will stand for centuries, unless destroyed by a German bomb. Not far from here, about three kilometers, is the remains of an old fort-cannot give name-which was built in 587 and destroyed in 1635 during the reign of Louis 13. I visited the remains and brought away a souvenir.
Too much cannot be said in favor of the French women. The French soldier could not stay in the trenches were it not for these more noble soldiers in the rear. It pains me to see them work so hard at all kinds of labor. The other day I went on business to a steel plant, and saw young girls about sixteen and eighteen years old handling heavy bars of iron, all kinds of heavy hauling, farming, clear down the line, they are doing it all. They are fighting-giving their lives for their country, and while many will not- cannot survive, yet God will certainly give them victory.
I am not in the trenches, but near enough to hear the guns and see the aeroplanes, and at times things are very interesting.
We closed a meeting the other day with the boys and in addition to a very large number who took a stand for the more Christ like life, sixty came forward and made public confession of faith in Christ. Of their number, fiften were immersed in a tributary of the river Marne. They did not stand back on account of icy water. I am a Methodist, but we do not quibble over the mode of baptism in the army. Leave that for those who have nothing else to do.
I am having a great experience-seeing things never expected to see-and coming in contact with humanity in the concrete. But it is costing an awful price. Have shed more tears the last seven weeks than in all my life before.
NOTES: This letter was written by Cullen Carter from France to his sister Mrs. J. R. Greer (Minnie) formerly of Marianna, Arkansas. Carter was born in 1880 and died in 1966. He is buried in the Maplewood Cemetery in Pulaski, Tennessee.
TRANSCRIBED BY PAYTON DHOOGE
I would like very much indeed to tell you about my trip, location and the army, but strict censorship forbids, and you must be content with the less interesting.
I think when God made this section of earth he smiled, for it is very, very beautiful. Words are inadequate to describe it. You must draw upon your imagination. Have not seen a worn out or discarded piece of land yet, and it has been in cultivation for hundreds and hundreds of years. The soil is constantly being replenished and not allowed to waste. Something, it seems, is kept growing all the time. Intensive instead of expensive farming is the rule.
Everyone lives in town-no country people. Small villages are found every few kilometers. About six or eight towns in a radius of five miles from this place. The people live this way for two reasons I suppose- have more land to cultivate, and for mutual protection.
The homes are more like forts than houses. Made of heavy stone, very thick walls, not over one window to a room and very poorly ventilated, in fact fresh air is an unknown quantity and sanitation- well, it is not in their dictionary. No wonder the death rate is high and tuberculosis seems to be the prevailing disease. This is the way I am finding it in country towns.
Everything is antique, and am beginning to feel a little aged myself. The town in which I am billeted must be fifteen hundred years old-it cannot rot or burn down and no doubt will stand for centuries, unless destroyed by a German bomb. Not far from here, about three kilometers, is the remains of an old fort-cannot give name-which was built in 587 and destroyed in 1635 during the reign of Louis 13. I visited the remains and brought away a souvenir.
Too much cannot be said in favor of the French women. The French soldier could not stay in the trenches were it not for these more noble soldiers in the rear. It pains me to see them work so hard at all kinds of labor. The other day I went on business to a steel plant, and saw young girls about sixteen and eighteen years old handling heavy bars of iron, all kinds of heavy hauling, farming, clear down the line, they are doing it all. They are fighting-giving their lives for their country, and while many will not- cannot survive, yet God will certainly give them victory.
I am not in the trenches, but near enough to hear the guns and see the aeroplanes, and at times things are very interesting.
We closed a meeting the other day with the boys and in addition to a very large number who took a stand for the more Christ like life, sixty came forward and made public confession of faith in Christ. Of their number, fiften were immersed in a tributary of the river Marne. They did not stand back on account of icy water. I am a Methodist, but we do not quibble over the mode of baptism in the army. Leave that for those who have nothing else to do.
I am having a great experience-seeing things never expected to see-and coming in contact with humanity in the concrete. But it is costing an awful price. Have shed more tears the last seven weeks than in all my life before.
NOTES: This letter was written by Cullen Carter from France to his sister Mrs. J. R. Greer (Minnie) formerly of Marianna, Arkansas. Carter was born in 1880 and died in 1966. He is buried in the Maplewood Cemetery in Pulaski, Tennessee.
TRANSCRIBED BY PAYTON DHOOGE