TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE NOVEMBER 10, 1918 P. 5
I am staying in a little French village of Monce, about 10 miles south of Le Mons. I was in Le Mons over night. These are not as dirty as I thought, in fact they are spanking clean. I stay with a few more boys in an old barn. We sleep in one town and eat in another. The towns are so close together that they almost seem to be one town.
I wish that I knew some French, but I don’t and don’t know that I will ever learn, as I cannot twist my tongue that way. If this was not so far away from home I don’t know but what I would like this country. I stopped in Brest awhile and that is some dirty place. Out in the country the people wear wooden shoes on their feet and dirt on their faces. I saw women threshing wheat with or by horsepower and the grain was falling on the ground and the women were walking on it in their bare feet and sweeping it up with branches of trees. Their feet were actually black with mud. ‘Nuff sed.’ The railroads are some better. The engines and trains slip by without as much noise and clatter as some of ours, but the cars are no larger than North Little Rock street cars and one has to enter a car from the side like our summer cars.
We went in swimming yesterday in a river, the second bath I have had since I came to this country.
I marched in review before the president of France the other day and he recognized me, for he saluted when we passed him. He’s a good scout.
France August 24.
NOTES: This is a partial letter written by William M. Woodsmall who served in the 131st Infantry in France. He is writing to his mother, Mrs. A. Woodsmall of Little Rock, Arkansas. Woodsmall had left Camp Pike on May 28 and was sent to France on August 1. Before the war he was a machinist in the Missouri Pacific shops in North Little Rock, Arkansas. He received the Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre with palms for his actions in the Argonne Offensive. These exploits took place on October 10, 1918 near Consenvoye, France. The Distinguished Service Cross citation reads: “He left our lines on his own initiative and, advancing against a German machine gun nest, killed the crew and brought back their machine gun. He showed marked coolness and bravery, with utter disregard for the heavy fire to which he was subjected.” He was born on September 16, 1888 and died on November 16, 1978.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON