TRANSCRIBED FROM THE SHARP COUNTY RECORD MARCH 7, 1919 P. 1
Dear sister:
I received your letter today, and must say I was glad to hear from you all again. I have been intending to write to you for some time, but in the army a fellow doesn’t have the chance to write like he does at home.
I was on the road just about one month from camp until I got to my company at the front. Of course I saw quite a few sights on the way, still I do not feel so much wiser. I went to the front at the famous town, Verdun, and was in reach of the big guns for about three weeks before the armistice was signed. The guns certainly did roar. They were mostly 14-inch guns, using shells that weighed 1400 pounds. These were American guns, but I guess the Germans had some just as big. When the Hun guns would go off we could hear the shells coming. Sometimes they would go just over us, and again perhaps they would burst before they got to us. When a fellow is down on his knees eating out of a small pan on the ground and these shells commence to fall and burst all around it is liable to take his appetite.
I am in the medical corps, and we had to operate a hospital for those who were gassed, so you see I was never in the trenches. That gas was one awful thing. The men would come into the hospital in awful condition. Some couldn’t walk. Some would be burned into a blister almost all over, and of course their lungs and throats were blistered. They would act just like a chicken with the limberneck.
I can’t begin to tell you how many boys were killed over here. Just before I got here my company handled 1296 patients in 24 hours. Some were shot all to pieces, and others were gassed. In battle at the Marne 18,000 men were shot in the thighs, to say nothing of those who were wounded in other parts of the body. So I think I have been lucky so far.
Will be glad to see you when I come home. But don’t look for me until you see me coming.
Your brother,
Thos. O. Stephens
NOTES: Stephens is writing to his sister, Mrs. A. C. Hansen who lives in Love, Arkansas. Stephens is with the hospital corps in France.
TRANSCRIBED BY JACOB GREEN
Dear sister:
I received your letter today, and must say I was glad to hear from you all again. I have been intending to write to you for some time, but in the army a fellow doesn’t have the chance to write like he does at home.
I was on the road just about one month from camp until I got to my company at the front. Of course I saw quite a few sights on the way, still I do not feel so much wiser. I went to the front at the famous town, Verdun, and was in reach of the big guns for about three weeks before the armistice was signed. The guns certainly did roar. They were mostly 14-inch guns, using shells that weighed 1400 pounds. These were American guns, but I guess the Germans had some just as big. When the Hun guns would go off we could hear the shells coming. Sometimes they would go just over us, and again perhaps they would burst before they got to us. When a fellow is down on his knees eating out of a small pan on the ground and these shells commence to fall and burst all around it is liable to take his appetite.
I am in the medical corps, and we had to operate a hospital for those who were gassed, so you see I was never in the trenches. That gas was one awful thing. The men would come into the hospital in awful condition. Some couldn’t walk. Some would be burned into a blister almost all over, and of course their lungs and throats were blistered. They would act just like a chicken with the limberneck.
I can’t begin to tell you how many boys were killed over here. Just before I got here my company handled 1296 patients in 24 hours. Some were shot all to pieces, and others were gassed. In battle at the Marne 18,000 men were shot in the thighs, to say nothing of those who were wounded in other parts of the body. So I think I have been lucky so far.
Will be glad to see you when I come home. But don’t look for me until you see me coming.
Your brother,
Thos. O. Stephens
NOTES: Stephens is writing to his sister, Mrs. A. C. Hansen who lives in Love, Arkansas. Stephens is with the hospital corps in France.
TRANSCRIBED BY JACOB GREEN