TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT NOVEMBER 9, 1918 P. 1
I am away over somewhere where the history of the world is being made more rapidly and loudly than at any other time. We are now in old German dugouts and huts. German signs over some of the doors, German signs stuck up at roadways, and long lines of tangled wire and winding trenches and strings of dugouts. I slept in one for several nights and had a warning not to dig too deeply or extensively for fear of revelations of which the occasional odors were any indication.
Near where I was was the famous steel tree which the Germans constructed and used as an outlook or observation post. It is a marvel in ingenuity and requires a lengthy description. I sent you some of the pieces of it.
Near me once, also, was the immense “Big Bertha” which from miles away shelled Amiens. Have been through miles of German trenches, seen rifles and ammunition and helmets by thousands. Sonuvenirs until I got loaded down, only to throw away and later find something better.
Just off at our neighbor hut is a cross to a German lieutenant who was killed there and who is buried under it. Across the valley is an immense hospital and the atendant graveyard, which covers acres and contains thousands. Souvenirs until I get loaded and now Americans.
There are only the long views of uncultivated fields and ragged forest stretches and wrecked villages. Some once prosperous villages are passed by unobserved, unless the signboard aattractes the attention telling what town it is or was. The trees are blasted, splintered and ragged, many dead from the gas fumes and shell fire. The fields are craters and pits where the shells plowed with their messengers of death, and from some secluded thicket comes the unmistaken odor which one never investigates but yet knows. It’s all the hell of war.
I have been down through miles of tunnels and passages, all of them furnished and wired for lights, and the French homes have been pillaged and the homes robbed for those furnishings. In one I found a figure in porcelain of the Christ taken from some church. In one there stood the most beautiful statue of Joan of Arc—her sword shot away. Shrapnel had torn away sections of her armor, but as she stood among the crumbled masonry with the yawning shell holes all around, I seemed to see her still living, and her spirit leading today the French troops to victory.
From this wreck I picked up the head from a statue of Christ and have it in the package I am sending you today.
As I returned after having journeyed nearly a mile, where I had to go to get the only face washing I have indulged in today, I saw through the rainy mists the long lines of cavalry winding silhouetted against the leaden sky to their billets in the wrecked villages below us. They were coming back from the recent drive for a rest. Over on another ridge yesterday I saw packs and long trains of artillery going up to take new positions. It’s all so interesting that one doesn’t feel acutely the discomforts.
There! Jerry must be coming over again, from the way the anti-aircraft are sending up 75’s. I’ll have to go out and have a look, and if too close, beat it, for my corrugated-roofed dugout for a tent does not stop effectively a large piece. Write me now at American Postoffice No. 790, as I am in charge of that.
NOTES: Louis Corneil Gulley was writing to his brother W. P. Gulley of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was born in Jacksonport, Arkansas on April 1, 1871 and died on January 31, 1946. He is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California. He was a lifelong postal employee beginning with his appointment in Little in 1901. During the war he traveled with the AEF to England and France. He collected a number of war relicts and sent them to his brother which exhibited them in the show window of a Main street piano house. Gulley had been a longtime collector and donated many items to the Arkansas History Commission. He was asked by the staff of the commission to collect relics for a proposed war museum. Many of the items he collected and brought back to the US are a part of the collection held today by the Arkansas State Archives.
TRANSCRIBED BY CAROLYN YANCEY KENT
I am away over somewhere where the history of the world is being made more rapidly and loudly than at any other time. We are now in old German dugouts and huts. German signs over some of the doors, German signs stuck up at roadways, and long lines of tangled wire and winding trenches and strings of dugouts. I slept in one for several nights and had a warning not to dig too deeply or extensively for fear of revelations of which the occasional odors were any indication.
Near where I was was the famous steel tree which the Germans constructed and used as an outlook or observation post. It is a marvel in ingenuity and requires a lengthy description. I sent you some of the pieces of it.
Near me once, also, was the immense “Big Bertha” which from miles away shelled Amiens. Have been through miles of German trenches, seen rifles and ammunition and helmets by thousands. Sonuvenirs until I got loaded down, only to throw away and later find something better.
Just off at our neighbor hut is a cross to a German lieutenant who was killed there and who is buried under it. Across the valley is an immense hospital and the atendant graveyard, which covers acres and contains thousands. Souvenirs until I get loaded and now Americans.
There are only the long views of uncultivated fields and ragged forest stretches and wrecked villages. Some once prosperous villages are passed by unobserved, unless the signboard aattractes the attention telling what town it is or was. The trees are blasted, splintered and ragged, many dead from the gas fumes and shell fire. The fields are craters and pits where the shells plowed with their messengers of death, and from some secluded thicket comes the unmistaken odor which one never investigates but yet knows. It’s all the hell of war.
I have been down through miles of tunnels and passages, all of them furnished and wired for lights, and the French homes have been pillaged and the homes robbed for those furnishings. In one I found a figure in porcelain of the Christ taken from some church. In one there stood the most beautiful statue of Joan of Arc—her sword shot away. Shrapnel had torn away sections of her armor, but as she stood among the crumbled masonry with the yawning shell holes all around, I seemed to see her still living, and her spirit leading today the French troops to victory.
From this wreck I picked up the head from a statue of Christ and have it in the package I am sending you today.
As I returned after having journeyed nearly a mile, where I had to go to get the only face washing I have indulged in today, I saw through the rainy mists the long lines of cavalry winding silhouetted against the leaden sky to their billets in the wrecked villages below us. They were coming back from the recent drive for a rest. Over on another ridge yesterday I saw packs and long trains of artillery going up to take new positions. It’s all so interesting that one doesn’t feel acutely the discomforts.
There! Jerry must be coming over again, from the way the anti-aircraft are sending up 75’s. I’ll have to go out and have a look, and if too close, beat it, for my corrugated-roofed dugout for a tent does not stop effectively a large piece. Write me now at American Postoffice No. 790, as I am in charge of that.
NOTES: Louis Corneil Gulley was writing to his brother W. P. Gulley of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was born in Jacksonport, Arkansas on April 1, 1871 and died on January 31, 1946. He is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California. He was a lifelong postal employee beginning with his appointment in Little in 1901. During the war he traveled with the AEF to England and France. He collected a number of war relicts and sent them to his brother which exhibited them in the show window of a Main street piano house. Gulley had been a longtime collector and donated many items to the Arkansas History Commission. He was asked by the staff of the commission to collect relics for a proposed war museum. Many of the items he collected and brought back to the US are a part of the collection held today by the Arkansas State Archives.
TRANSCRIBED BY CAROLYN YANCEY KENT