Herb doesn't have Cooties

Herb has made it to Epense, Marne.

October 17, 1918

Dear Mother,

This slip that I am enclosing gives you the right to send me my Christmas package – 9 x 4 x 3 inches. The slip is to be pasted on the package and serves as address. I haven’t any idea what to ask you to send in it. At any rate don’t send a book because they can be sent just like magazines and it would be a shame to waste the space.

We’re out of the zone of activity – came out yesterday, and I can’t say I’m a bit sorry. Today I had my first bath in a month and it surely felt good. After you’ve gone dirty for a month it’s hard to imagine anything that feels better than a bath and clean clothes.

As usual we’re in a small village – that’s to be expected. However, it’s a bit cleaner than the average run hereabouts. The reason why we’ve gotten one of the best villages hereabouts is that we’ve been travelling along with the Division Headquarters and they, of course, must have the best going. In fact, the General himself is in the house that’s on the same lot as our camouflaged so we have to cut out all unnecessary noise and nearly break our arms saluting every time we go in and out. However, there is a French Y.M.C.A. run by an American who came over here a month or two ago from some small burg up near Saranac Lake. He’s given us some magazines and there are moving pictures nearly every day. Of course, they’re not the kind that are shown in the Griswold, but one can’t be particular over here.

The rainy season started several days ago and I imagine we’ve seen the last of the sun until next April. It isn’t cold, of course, but it’s horribly damp. So, today, I took the opportunity of putting on my woolen underwear and it feels very welcome. I shouldn’t have waited until now, but of course, when we were up above we had no extra baggage with us. Practically everyone in the Section got cooties from living in the old German dugouts. Strange to say, I didn’t. of course no one around here will believe me when I say I haven’t them, but if I have any they’re some variety that doesn’t bite and there isn’t any such animal. However a bath or two and clean clothes usually knocks them, so the boys ought to be through scratching shortly.

I didn’t intend this for a regular letter but only a note to go with the package slip because they must be sent at once, so I’ll write again in two or three days.

Your affectionate son,
Herb.

I thought I'd include some photos of Herb so we can all remember what he looks like, the cutie-pie.

Good Week for:

Pork fat, after the world’s oldest woman, Susannah Mushatt Jones, 116, credited her longevity to starting every day with a meal of bacon and eggs. A sign in Jones’ kitchen in Brooklyn reads “Bacon makes everything better.”

Amen.

I wish there were an easier way to get my lipid panel tested more often and cheaper because I am convinced that, though my overall cholesterol may be higher, that it is my 'good' cholesterol that is making it that way. And I cook plenty in the saved bacon fat.

Taken from the October 16th print edition of 'The Week'.

Margarine is a killer

Taken from the August 28th edition of The Week Magazine:

Doctors have long advised people to limit their consumption of saturated fats found in butter, cream, and meats. But new research shows that these fats, derived from animal products, actually don’t increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, or diabetes. The study found that industrially produced trans fats, found in margarine, snack foods, and packaged baked goods, do raise the risk of premature death by 34 percent. The Canadian project was the largest yet of its kind: Researchers looking at 50 studies involving more than 1 million people found that trans fats were also associated with a 28 percent increased risk of death from coronary heart disease and a 21 percent risk of cardiovascular disease. The study contradicts decades of conventional wisdom about saturated fats dating back to the 1950s. “That said, we aren’t advocating an increase of the allowance of saturated fats,” study author Russell de Souza of McMaster University tells The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Saturated fats may not cause heart disease, he says, but they can lead to weight gain.

What a relief. It always seemed so unnatural to eat a processed spread. I am all about butter and ghee nowadays.

Now where might Nellie Jane have gone on her trip?

Herb is in this mysterious place, Somme Py, until the 16th of October.

See how valuable hand knit socks are???? We should all be so lucky to have someone love us enough to knit us some socks.

October 9, 1918

Dearest Mother,

This is the letter I promised you on the card I wrote several days ago. As every one in the world knows now the French troops are advancing along the lines at all points. We happen to be at a point where a strong effort is being made – and made quite successfully. At present I’m sleeping in a dugout that was being used by a German colonel two weeks ago and at that the actual line is a good ways ahead. So you see considerable progress has been made. The country hereabouts is absolutely desolate the Germans had held it for four years – up till two weeks ago. The soil is mostly chalk and guess is pretty scarce now so most of the landscape is dirty white. All this district was once a forest but what trees haven’t been destroyed by shell fire have been cut down by the Germans so the country is practically bare. One surprising thing to me is the lack of good roads behind the German lines. The French have gangs of German prisoners out widening and repairing the old roads and building new ones in order to [prepare?} for the immense traffic of all kinds.

We were out of touch with the mail man for some time, but we have a system now whereby he leaves our mail at a town some 15 miles back of here and collects whatever there is to go out.

Headquarters is turning down all requests for shipments from the States of any articles that can be bought in France or are issued by the Government. Heavy socks are issued – of course they’re not hand knitted but that fact isn’t considered to cut any ice. So I guess there’s no way for me to get those socks. I’d certainly like to have them, too.

The Posts + Times come in quite regularly. I got one package yesterday and one about a week ago – and they always come in very handy. Letters, however, haven’t been very plentiful. However I did get those telling all about your trip and was very glad that you had such a pleasant time. I hope you, Mother, got a good rest. I was awfully glad to have those pictures of Olive – after I’d figured out who the young lady might be. My faith how she has grown. I hope you’ll have a good one of Marine to send me and I would like to have one of you and Dad and Harry.

Your affectionate son,
Herbert

U.S. soldier Alvin York displays heroics at Argonne

Thought I would include something interesting on this day in 1918.... about the time we are seeing what is going on in Herb's world.

Makes one want to cry - a conscientious objector and yet he displays some amazing courage. Wow.

On this day in 1918, United States Corporal Alvin C. York reportedly kills over 20 German soldiers and captures an additional 132 at the head of a small detachment in the Argonne Forest near the Meuse River in France. The exploits later earned York the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Born in 1887 in a log cabin near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, York was the third of 11 children in a family supported by subsistence farming and hunting. After experiencing a religious conversion, he became a fundamentalist Christian around 1915. Two years later, when the United States entered World War I, York was drafted into the U.S. Army. After being denied conscientious-objector status, York enlisted in the 82nd Infantry Division and in May 1918 arrived in France for active duty on the Western Front. He served in the successful Saint-Mihiel offensive in September of that year, was promoted to corporal and given command of his own squadron.

The events of October 8, 1918, took place as part of the Meuse-Argonne offensive—what was to be the final Allied push against German forces on the Western Front during World War I. York and his battalion were given the task of seizing German-held positions across a valley; after encountering difficulties, the small group of soldiers—numbering some 17 men—were fired upon by a German machine-gun nest at the top of a nearby hill. The gunners cut down nine men, including a superior officer, leaving York in charge of the squadron.

As York wrote in his diary of his subsequent actions: “[T]hose machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful…. I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush, I didn’t even have time to kneel or lie down…. As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn’t want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.”

Several other American soldiers followed York’s lead and began firing; as they drew closer to the machine-gun nest, the German commander—thinking he had underestimated the size of the enemy squadron—surrendered his garrison of some 90 men. On the way back to the Allied lines, York and his squad took more prisoners, for a total of 132. Though Alvin York consistently played down his accomplishments of that day, he was given credit for killing more than 20 German soldiers. Promoted to the rank of sergeant, he remained on the front lines until November 1, 10 days before the armistice. In April 1919, York was awarded the highest American military decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Lauded by The New York Times as “the war’s biggest hero” and by General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), as “the greatest civilian soldier” of World War I, York went on to found a school for underprivileged children, the York Industrial Institute (now Alvin C. York Institute), in rural Tennessee. In 1941, his heroism became the basis for a movie, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper. Upon York’s death in 1964, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson called him “a symbol of American courage and sacrifice” who epitomized “the gallantry of American fighting men and their sacrifices on behalf of freedom.”

Britain and France commit troops to operation in Salonika, Greece

Ok, so this is from 1915 - much earlier than Herb's letters. The reason I am including it is because I just finished a book titled The Thread by Victoria Hislop. I didn't love the book, but it does tie together many of my interests... The heroine is a seamstress and she is one of the people 'exchanged' from Turkey to Salonika, Greece in roughly 1924. So, I am again tying my trip to Turkey and Greece with World War 1. The story tell of Greek history between the two wars.



The following is from the History Channel's 'This Day in History' for the 5th of October, 1915.

At the request of the Greek prime minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, Britain and France agree on October 5, 1915, to land troops at the city of Salonika (now Thessaloniki), in northern Greece, during World War I.

Earlier in the war, David Lloyd George, Britain’s minister of munitions, had argued for sending Allied troops to Salonika instead of the Gallipoli Peninsula; the idea was shelved when the ill-fated invasion of Gallipoli went ahead in the late spring of 1915. In early October of that year, however, Britain and France each agreed to contribute 75,000 troops to establish a base of operations in Salonika, from which they would attempt to aid their battered ally in the Balkans, Serbia, in its struggle against the Central Powers.

The expedition had three major drawbacks, however: First, it would conflict with the demands of Gallipoli operation, which was ongoing but locked in a virtual stalemate. Second, such a large Allied force could not be fully established in Salonika until the following January, which would undoubtedly be too late to aid the Serbs. Finally, such an operation would violate the neutrality of Greece. Though many in that country, including Venizelos, favored intervention in the war on the side of the Allies, King Constantine remained steadfastly neutral; married to a relative of Kaiser Wilhelm II, his natural sympathies lay with Germany. Lloyd George, for one, dismissed the idea of a violation of Greek neutrality, arguing disingenuously that “there was no comparison between going through Greece and the German passage through Belgium.” In fact, a goal of the Salonika expedition, expressed by Lord H.H. Kitchener, the British secretary of war, was to provoke Greece into intervening and aiding Serbia against the Central Powers.

Another objective of the operation in October 1915 was to defend Greece against invaders from Bulgaria, which entered the war that same month on the side of the Central Powers. In the end, however, the Anglo-French force began arriving too late to aid the Serbs—the Serbian capital, Belgrade, was evacuated and occupied by the enemy on October 9—and was not strong enough for an aggressive offensive against the Bulgarian invaders. Against the objections of Constantine and his supporters, the Allies remained in Salonika, as yet another front in World War I became bogged down in stalemate over the course of the next year.

Lots of Action!

According to the document I found at the National Archives, Herb is in Somme Py, but I can't seem to figure that one out. Actually, the notation says that they are in a RR Tunnel 1 km east from Somme Py.

Yesterday we saw a glimpse of what was going on around Herb at this time. Nice of him to send a note home. :)

October 5 (1918)

Dear Mother,
There has been a lot of action here lately and this has been my first opportunity to write. I am quite well and things have been going finely. Things will probably be so that I can write you a letter in a few days.
Your affectionate son,
Herb

Germany telegraphs President Wilson seeking armistice

From the History Channel...

In the early hours of October 4, 1918, German Chancellor Max von Baden, appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II just three days earlier, sends a telegraph message to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., requesting an armistice between Germany and the Allied powers in World War I.

By the end of September 1918, the Allies had made a tremendous resurgence on the Western Front, reversing the gains of the previous spring’s massive German offensive and pushing the German army in eastern France and western Belgium back to its last line of defenses, the so-called Hindenburg Line. Stunned and despondent, German General Erich Ludendorff, chief architect of that final spring offensive, reversed his previous optimism about the German military situation and demanded at a crown council meeting on September 29, that Germany seek an immediate armistice based on the terms President Wilson had laid out in his famous Fourteen Points address in January 1918. Feeling that the army’s leadership had completely usurped the government, Chancellor Georg von Hertling immediately resigned; Kaiser Wilhelm subsequently appointed his second cousin, Prince Max von Baden, to the post.

As soon as von Baden arrived in Berlin to take office on October 1, he made it clear that he had no intention of admitting defeat until Germany had regained at least some ground on the battlefield; in this way he hoped to retain some powers of negotiation with the Allies. On October 3, however, Paul von Hindenburg, the German army’s chief of staff and head of the Third Supreme Command—as Germany’s military leadership was known—reiterated Ludendorff’s advice, stating that “The German army still stands firm and is defending itself against all attacks. The situation, however, is growing more critical daily, and may force the High Command to momentous decisions. In these circumstances it is imperative to stop the fighting in order to spare the German people and their allies unnecessary sacrifices. Every day of delay costs thousands of brave soldiers their lives.”

Von Baden disagreed with Hindenburg, telling him that too early an armistice could mean Germany would lose valuable territory in Alsace-Lorraine and East Prussia, which had been implicit under the terms of the Fourteen Points, despite Wilson’s expressed desire for a “peace without victory.” Deciding to seek his own way apart from the Supreme Command, von Baden brought two Socialist members of the German Reichstag into his cabinet; they too, appraising the growing anti-war feeling on the home front and in the government, advised the chancellor to seek an armistice. On October 4, heeding their advice, von Baden telegraphed his request to Washington.

Wilson’s response, in notes of October 14 and 23, made it clear that the Allies would only deal with a democratic Germany, not an imperial state with an effective military dictatorship presided over by the Supreme Command. Neither Wilson nor his even less conciliatory counterparts in Britain and France trusted von Baden’s declaration of October 5 that he was taking steps to move Germany towards parliamentary democracy. After Wilson’s second note arrived, Ludendorff’s resolve returned and he announced that the note should be rejected and the war resumed in full force. After peace had come so tantalizingly close, however, it proved even more difficult for Germans—on the battlefield as well as on the home front—to carry on. Within a month, Ludendorff had resigned, as the German position had deteriorated still further and it was determined that the war could not be allowed to continue. On November 7, Hindenburg contacted the Allied Supreme Commander, Ferdinand Foch, to open armistice negotiations; four days later, World War I came to an end.

Report On Sections

And here we have the report to the Chief of Service about the Sections. Brave Section 580.

I wonder what Herb does as the Clerk. Did he ever learn to drive? Is he out making the runs? I should think he would be, but nothing in the letters would say one way or the other.

And the Month before...

Well, I didn't get my act together soon enough - here we see the same report as yesterday, but from August.

S.S.U. 580 : At present "en repose" where they have been for three weeks. Great improvement since last month in care and upkeep of cars. All in first class condition and some newly painted. Men have setting up exercises in morning and assembly before supper at night. Spirit and discipline of men excellent. Lieut. most conscientious and painstaking. French Lieut. Mignet away on permission and will not return as he is called to another service. Lieut Seymour to continue alone according to instructions of the D.S.A. Speaks French and is well liked by division. Garford truck still at Parc D waiting for a rear wheel ire ordered long ago.

We see Seymour's signature on the bottom of Herb's letters. Poor guy, has to read his troops letters in addition to everything else.

Glad to know morale is excellent. We know that this is what Herb is writing home at about the time this report was being written.