TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE JANUARY 20, 1919 P. 5
I am sure glad to get a letter from home or there abouts. I received a letter from brother Bryan at Beauregard about a month ago, just after I had gone over the top with my company and taken an important hill, from a military standpoint. This hill had been the objective of four other companies, but they failed to reach and hold it and we took it with 12 causals and held it until we were relieved and that was the evening before the armistice was signed. To get a letter from home helps to break the monotony of just walking around through the mud with hissing large caliber shells bursting about you. One large shell burst up over me; it had struck the top of a large tree and the wood and fragments from the shell fell all around me. This was followed by six others in about the same place and I beat it for a dugout, which happened to be real close. I have seen several men lying around on the ground with a leg there, and an arm here and a head somewhere else. I happened to be walking along the outpost line when these six shells fell within reaching distant of me.
While we were taking this hill I spoke to one man who was lying down on his stomach firing and a large explosive came over and fell so close to him that it ploughed under the ground beneath him. It exploded and the man’s body was seen to go 15 or 20 feet in the air, but when he came down his head, both legs and arms were off his body. Another man lost the whole of one side of his head by a piece of shell about the size of your hand.
When we had reached our objective and before they had opened up with their famous artillery I took a runner and proceeded out in the front of my outpost and down alongside a railroad the Germans had built in the wood. When I had gone about 200 yards I noticed coming towards me on the railroad track 15 Germans. I didn’t have anything but my pistol and the runner beside me had only his pistol, so I decided to go back to the outpost and notify the platoon and order them to prepare to fight and I went back to the railroad track and they were gone. They had beat it.
A few minutes later we began to receive fire from the Germans’ artillery and they certainly did give it to us; you could not count them with an adding machine they were coming so fast. But we stuck to it by hugging the ground. Most of the men got hit walking about and flying fragments got them.
We are due to leave here Sunday for a 150-mile hike to Luxemburg. We arrived here on the 6th of December for a week’s drilling and it was the first time since October 9 that I have been behind the support lines of our section, which was east of their court, and just west of the Moselle river here. They brought us about 30 kilometers south, near Toul and Nancy, and on Sunday we are to go back over the same route toward Luxemburg. Can you beat it for hiking? It is fun for those that hike in autos or trucks or rail. But it is tough on the doughboy with his 50-pound pack on his back and three days’ rations and an extra pair of shoes and other extras. Well, I suppose we will live through it O. K., but I dread the 150-mile hike. The roads are muddy and raining every day. It is getting cool here now. I have been at Verdun, Mertz and Bal de Roppes. I enclose a clipping from a Paris newspaper in regard to the 7th Division, the one I am in, a part of the Army of Occupation. Write real soon. As ever your son.
NOTES: This letter was written by First Lieutenant Ernest Eugene Stansberry to his father J. W. Stansberry of Little Rock, Arkansas. Ernest left the University of Arkansas where he was a star football player to go into the officer’s training school at Fort Roots, during the summer of 1917. He graduated as a second lieutenant. He was tall and slender with blue eyes and brown hair. He was born October 15th 1893 and died on June 1, 1962 at Dallas, Texas.
TRANSCRIBED BY CAROLYN YANCEY KENT.
I am sure glad to get a letter from home or there abouts. I received a letter from brother Bryan at Beauregard about a month ago, just after I had gone over the top with my company and taken an important hill, from a military standpoint. This hill had been the objective of four other companies, but they failed to reach and hold it and we took it with 12 causals and held it until we were relieved and that was the evening before the armistice was signed. To get a letter from home helps to break the monotony of just walking around through the mud with hissing large caliber shells bursting about you. One large shell burst up over me; it had struck the top of a large tree and the wood and fragments from the shell fell all around me. This was followed by six others in about the same place and I beat it for a dugout, which happened to be real close. I have seen several men lying around on the ground with a leg there, and an arm here and a head somewhere else. I happened to be walking along the outpost line when these six shells fell within reaching distant of me.
While we were taking this hill I spoke to one man who was lying down on his stomach firing and a large explosive came over and fell so close to him that it ploughed under the ground beneath him. It exploded and the man’s body was seen to go 15 or 20 feet in the air, but when he came down his head, both legs and arms were off his body. Another man lost the whole of one side of his head by a piece of shell about the size of your hand.
When we had reached our objective and before they had opened up with their famous artillery I took a runner and proceeded out in the front of my outpost and down alongside a railroad the Germans had built in the wood. When I had gone about 200 yards I noticed coming towards me on the railroad track 15 Germans. I didn’t have anything but my pistol and the runner beside me had only his pistol, so I decided to go back to the outpost and notify the platoon and order them to prepare to fight and I went back to the railroad track and they were gone. They had beat it.
A few minutes later we began to receive fire from the Germans’ artillery and they certainly did give it to us; you could not count them with an adding machine they were coming so fast. But we stuck to it by hugging the ground. Most of the men got hit walking about and flying fragments got them.
We are due to leave here Sunday for a 150-mile hike to Luxemburg. We arrived here on the 6th of December for a week’s drilling and it was the first time since October 9 that I have been behind the support lines of our section, which was east of their court, and just west of the Moselle river here. They brought us about 30 kilometers south, near Toul and Nancy, and on Sunday we are to go back over the same route toward Luxemburg. Can you beat it for hiking? It is fun for those that hike in autos or trucks or rail. But it is tough on the doughboy with his 50-pound pack on his back and three days’ rations and an extra pair of shoes and other extras. Well, I suppose we will live through it O. K., but I dread the 150-mile hike. The roads are muddy and raining every day. It is getting cool here now. I have been at Verdun, Mertz and Bal de Roppes. I enclose a clipping from a Paris newspaper in regard to the 7th Division, the one I am in, a part of the Army of Occupation. Write real soon. As ever your son.
NOTES: This letter was written by First Lieutenant Ernest Eugene Stansberry to his father J. W. Stansberry of Little Rock, Arkansas. Ernest left the University of Arkansas where he was a star football player to go into the officer’s training school at Fort Roots, during the summer of 1917. He graduated as a second lieutenant. He was tall and slender with blue eyes and brown hair. He was born October 15th 1893 and died on June 1, 1962 at Dallas, Texas.
TRANSCRIBED BY CAROLYN YANCEY KENT.