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Read Ebook: I was there with the Yanks on the western front 1917-1919 by Baldridge Cyrus Leroy Baukhage Hilmar R Hilmar Robert
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Ebook has 187 lines and 8067 words, and 4 pages
Erasme, the youngest son who starts his three years of compulsory training in the fall 1919
The eldest son. After his three years of training he was called to war. He has never come back.
Soissons--1918
Awaiting the signal to attack. The sergeant is ready to blow the whistle for his squad to follow him out through a path in the barbed wire. In another minute they will advance close behind the bursting shells of a heavy barrage which, lifting, will leave them face to face with German machine guns.
France 1917
The "Territorial"--the name given French poilu between the ages of 34 and 40
Vailly--1917
Noyon, 1918
The Paris Bus--many kilometers from the Place de l'Op?ra--used for transporting troops, horses, and fresh meat to the front
FATIGUE
You can see 'em in the movies, With the sunlight on their guns, You can read in all the papers Of the charge that licked the Huns, You can read of "khaki heroes" And of "gleaming bayonet," But there's one thing that the writers And the artist all forget:
That's me! On K.P. In my suit of denim blue I am thinking--not of you-- But the places where I'd like the top to be!
On the posters in the windows, In the monthly magazine, Are the boys in leather leggins Such as Pershing's never seen; Oh, they love to paint 'em pretty, All dressed up and fit to kiss,-- Ain't it funny there's a picture That they always seem to miss?
Bless me soul, Loading coal! In my little shimmy-shirt, Eyes and mouth full up with dirt--
Built for speed / and with light pack to match
R.B.--Belleau Wood / 1918 / A Marine
"Steady, buddy!" Baldridge Paris 1919
In an abri waiting for the "Gothas" to go home
The veteran of the Spanish-American war tells 'em how it ought to be done
R. Lufbery
Sketched at the Lafayette Escadrille field near Longpont as the aviator was getting into his "union suit" preparatory to flying in a Chemin-des-Dames engagement
Base port stevedores--Volunteers from the South who work eight hours a day for seven days a week--Bordeaux/18
A 26th Division Wagon Train moving toward Chasseurs wood--1918 Mule and Prairie Schooner in a country made desert by war
POILU
When we left the transport Back in St. Nazaire, Second thing you asked us,-- "Quand finit la guerre?" Didn't know your lingo You weren't hard to get, Peace was what you wanted-- And a cigarette.
Then up in the trenches It was just the same, "When's it going to finish?" Didn't seem quite game. Then we saw you strafing, Saw we had you wrong, Wondered how you stood it Four years long.
Drank your sour pinard, Shared what smokes we had, Got to know you better, Found you weren't so bad, Four years in the trenches! How the hell'd you do it On five sous a day?
American being taught by Frenchman to drive truck so that the latter may return to his farm. France/17
Moving up-- over a corduroy road hastily laid down by a g?rre regiment in war-wasted land. The piece of wall on the right is all that remains of a French village of five hundred inhabitants
Senegalaise types / voluneers used for the attack and for labor on roads Vailly 1917
Moulin Laffaux
He handles a big naval gun mounted on railroad cars near Soissons
In the war of 1870 he drove a team instead of a camion.
Too old to serve in the active army and so assigned to the more unromatic, uninteresting but vital work of loading camions, tending horses, or building and repairing roads back of the lines. It has been said that the first battle of Verdun was won by the camion service. This is the kind of man who made that victory possible
A "walking case" -- France, August -18
A wounded Chasseur and "Fritz" who has the next cot. They get the same treatment and neither seems to mind the proximity
Meaux
An American ambulance at a poste de secours Ostel--1917
THAT QUIET SECTOR
Four hours off--two hours on-- And not a thing to do but think, And watch the mud and twisted wire And never let your peepers blink.
Two hours on--four hours off-- The dug-out's slimy as the trench; It stinks of leather, men, and smoke,-- You wake up dopey from the stench.
Four hours off--two hours on-- Back on the same old trick again, The same old noth'n' to do at all From yesterday till God knows when. On post or not it's just the same, The waiting is what gets your goat And makes you want to chuck the game Or risk a trench-knife in your throat.
Two hours on--four hours off-- I s'pose our job is not so hard,-- I s'pose sometime we're going to quit--
The ghosts we leave--do they stand guard?
The water wagon filled with red-hot coffee going to the ration dump via shell fire and not losing any time about it-- Outside Belleau wood--June '18
He's been on every front from Chateau-Thierry to the Rhine
Coblenz--1919
After the German Retreat Cleaning up old quarry used by Fritz as a barracks--Chemin-des-Dames
"Marraines" who kept their poilu godsons at the front in good cheer with letters and packages from home, and who took their Yank cousins to their hearts in the same kindly spirit
Sophie--Marie--Madeleine
in Paris and the provinces-- A type to match the ideal of every man who looks
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