TRANSCRIBED FROM THE WYNNE PROGRESS APRIL 11, 1919 P. 3
Dear Friends:
I will answer your most welcome letter, after so long a time.
Perhaps some incidents of our trip over here will interest you. I sailed from Newport News, June 14, 1918. Almost immediately, when off the New Jersey coast, our fleet became engaged in a fight with four German submarines. We made short work of these, sinking two, while the other two made their escape.
We landed safely at Brest, France, June 28, where we were sent to a rest camp to recover our “shore legs.” It was everything but a rest camp to us, for we had to help unload the boats there for three days.
From the rest camp we traveled by train three days and nights arriving at Vaux, July 4. There the train had to be unloaded and there is where I spent my Fourth of July, by working all day.
From Vaux we hiked to the front line trenches in Alsace-Lorraine, down on the Swiss border. It was August 8 when we went into the trenches, a dark rainy night. A big Irishman and I had a post together. We had just got settled down when we heard a German machine gun open up out in no-man’s-land. Following our instructions, we got down instantly. Myriads of bullets cut the grasss and dirt right over our heads, but thank God, they didn’t hit us.
We went out in no-man’s-land next thetic, that’s Uncle Sam all over, could hear them driving stakes and fixing up their wires where we had cut them.
We remained in Alsace for a month and went to what is called the Western front and there is where I saw my first real fighting. It was on October 12th when 222 of us went over the top after the Germans and only 49 got back.
The German aeroplanes were as thick as ____birds. I looked up waving defiantly at once, and he fired about four hundred shots at me from his machine gun. Then you ought to have seen me getting into a shell hole. The Germans shelled us five days and nights without stopping, but that did not prevent us Americans, including many Arkansas boys, from capturing inch by inch, a well fortified hill. We drove the Huns across the Meuse river and they burned the bridge behind them. We captured 2,000 of them and a lot of big guns. They had women working guns. One unbuttoned her waist to show us she was a woman. We had to dig in at night to keep them from shooting us with their machine guns. I got holes shot through my clothing and gas mask and gunshot out of my hand. Believe me, I began to think my time was up.
We were on our way to Metz to again go over the top, the day the armistice was signed.
Porter F. Martin
NOTES: Martin was a soldier in the 114th Infantry. He was writing to his friend, A. H. Reeves of Wynne. He was born in 1890 and died in 1994. He is buried in the Walnut Grove Cemetery at Wynne, Arkansas.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON
Dear Friends:
I will answer your most welcome letter, after so long a time.
Perhaps some incidents of our trip over here will interest you. I sailed from Newport News, June 14, 1918. Almost immediately, when off the New Jersey coast, our fleet became engaged in a fight with four German submarines. We made short work of these, sinking two, while the other two made their escape.
We landed safely at Brest, France, June 28, where we were sent to a rest camp to recover our “shore legs.” It was everything but a rest camp to us, for we had to help unload the boats there for three days.
From the rest camp we traveled by train three days and nights arriving at Vaux, July 4. There the train had to be unloaded and there is where I spent my Fourth of July, by working all day.
From Vaux we hiked to the front line trenches in Alsace-Lorraine, down on the Swiss border. It was August 8 when we went into the trenches, a dark rainy night. A big Irishman and I had a post together. We had just got settled down when we heard a German machine gun open up out in no-man’s-land. Following our instructions, we got down instantly. Myriads of bullets cut the grasss and dirt right over our heads, but thank God, they didn’t hit us.
We went out in no-man’s-land next thetic, that’s Uncle Sam all over, could hear them driving stakes and fixing up their wires where we had cut them.
We remained in Alsace for a month and went to what is called the Western front and there is where I saw my first real fighting. It was on October 12th when 222 of us went over the top after the Germans and only 49 got back.
The German aeroplanes were as thick as ____birds. I looked up waving defiantly at once, and he fired about four hundred shots at me from his machine gun. Then you ought to have seen me getting into a shell hole. The Germans shelled us five days and nights without stopping, but that did not prevent us Americans, including many Arkansas boys, from capturing inch by inch, a well fortified hill. We drove the Huns across the Meuse river and they burned the bridge behind them. We captured 2,000 of them and a lot of big guns. They had women working guns. One unbuttoned her waist to show us she was a woman. We had to dig in at night to keep them from shooting us with their machine guns. I got holes shot through my clothing and gas mask and gunshot out of my hand. Believe me, I began to think my time was up.
We were on our way to Metz to again go over the top, the day the armistice was signed.
Porter F. Martin
NOTES: Martin was a soldier in the 114th Infantry. He was writing to his friend, A. H. Reeves of Wynne. He was born in 1890 and died in 1994. He is buried in the Walnut Grove Cemetery at Wynne, Arkansas.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON