An Interesting letter from Lieut. J.E. Johnston, Stationed Near Cantigney, France
June 17, 1918
Four officers from this regiment left for the
States about a week ago, the next four haven’t been chosen yet. They may stop
that now that there are so many coming over. Gee! Before long we will have a
real army in the field and I say “God speed the day.” Germany had better do her
worst or best right now for by the end of summer the Allies will be more than
well fixed and next spring—well, all I’ve got so say is she had better look
out. It won’t be Germany who’ll do the pushing then and there’ll be a good deal
of pushing done. You ought to see how our soldiers fight—I mean our Infantry. They
are wonderful, and My! What hardships they have to endure at times. I don’t
mean that the Artillerymen are not good fighters, too, nor that they don’t have
their hard times, for they do, but they are back in what seems a safe place at
any rate. They have to shoot day and night, of course, and be ready to put down
a barrage any time the infantry call for it, and so they undergo the shelling
by the enemy, of course, but they have their safe dug outs and they don’t have
to live in the trenches. The spirit among all the soldiers is unbeatable, and
none of them mind going through anything to get a job done. When you know all
that and also know that there are thousands of others just like them coming
over, there can be not the slightest doubt that German militarism is doomed.
And the French! I don’t mind saying it at
all—they are the best fighters in Europe, from the private on up to Foch. The
longer you live among them, the more you know them and see and realize what
they’ve undergone, the more you respect and admire them. They are great on
strategy, great in their individual fighting, and the best artillerymen on
earth. With the French in command, I don’t get at all scared when a report
comes in that the Germans have taken some more territory. And all the papers
and a majority of the people in the United States have entirely the wrong
conception of France’s strength today—about her having bled to death and all
that. Whenever some real threatening attack comes off it’s generally the French
Reserves who stop it.
We had the funniest thing happen to us the
other day, or rather it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic. Late
in the morning a plane with British markings flew over the town we are living
in now and quite low. That caused no excitement or comment, as we knew the
British were flying in our sector. Well, as everybody was watching him, he
dropped something twice, what we supposed to be messages (nothing unusual about
that, and it goes on all the time.) A second or two later we discovered that they
were bombs. Then, of course, everything opened up on him and we were all
enraged because of this new underhand and overhead trick the Boche had pulled.
Well, nobody could hit him, though every machine gun and anti-aircraft around
were popping away and he didn’t seem to care for he still flew very low and
started using his machine gun. He’d go down a road and it wide open chasing a
cannon or auto and wherever he saw a group of men he’d toss over a small bomb
or two. He killed one Frenchman and wounded several American and still he kept
it up. We all began to admire him very much for we’d never seen a Boche with so
much nerve and he sure had everybody in the whole country under cover. Finally
he was forced to land with a fractured shoulder and low and behold! He was no
German at all but an American flying in a British plane, who had only been in
France three weeks and had gotten his map mixed up, thinking a railroad behind
us was one that is in the German lines. It would have been extremely funny but
for the tragedy. They say when the poor fellow heard what he had done he broke
down and cried like a baby. I hoope they don’t do anything to him but teach him
how to read a map and send him in a plane to Germany, for he surely had his
nerve and has I believe great possibilities as an aviator.
Things are very quiet here now after they
tried some several unsuccessful attempts to take back the village we took from
the Boche some time ago.
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