DIY History | Transcribe | World War I Diaries and Letters | Conger Reynolds correspondence, March 1-17, 1918 | 1918-03-16 Conger Reynolds to Daphne Reynolds Page 5

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Conger Reynolds correspondence, March 1-17, 1918

1918-03-16 Conger Reynolds to Daphne Reynolds Page 5

that no one took him for a man, at another point everybody walked past a section of trench without seeing a man who was looking over the parapet with his head and shoulders above it. 
A bit later we talked to the boys who had been doing their bit in the trenches. I talked to several soldiers and heard some rattling good stories. One was of a sergeant and a private who were caught in a dugout by a German lieutenant and ten men who had come over in a raid. "Come out and get us," the Germans taunted. The two Americans rushed out. A bomb hit the sergeant's helmet glanced into the dugout, and exploded without doing any harm. Before anything else could happen the sergeant and the man had shot down the whole eleven Boches. Too much rapid American action for them. The boys were pretty calm about their experiences. They didn't think it had been any fun, not did they show any violent disliking of it. Their attitude was simply the matter-of-fact one that one finds among the British and the French who have been through a lot of it. Our fellows had met their test, proved that Americans can do their bit as well as the rest, and were enjoying their vacation without worrying about what happened when they were in the trenches or what would happen when they went back. A few of their comrades had not come back with them, but the rest were not allowing that fact to keep them from having a good time today at their base ball game, no more'n one big fellow I saw was allowing a shrapnel hole in his hand to keep him from taking part in the games  On their bulletin board in the Y.M.C.A. were pieces of verse they had written in the trenches

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that no one took him for a man, at another point everybody walked past a section of trench without seeing a man who was looking over the parapet with his head and shoulders above it. A bit later we talked to the boys who had been doing their bit in the trenches. I talked to several soldiers and heard some rattling good stories. One was of a sergeant and a private who were caught in a dugout by a German lieutenant and ten men who had come over in a raid. "Come out and get us," the Germans taunted. The two Americans rushed out. A bomb hit the sergeant's helmet glanced into the dugout, and exploded without doing any harm. Before anything else could happen the sergeant and the man had shot down the whole eleven Boches. Too much rapid American action for them. The boys were pretty calm about their experiences. They didn't think it had been any fun, not did they show any violent disliking of it. Their attitude was simply the matter-of-fact one that one finds among the British and the French who have been through a lot of it. Our fellows had met their test, proved that Americans can do their bit as well as the rest, and were enjoying their vacation without worrying about what happened when they were in the trenches or what would happen when they went back. A few of their comrades had not come back with them, but the rest were not allowing that fact to keep them from having a good time today at their base ball game, no more'n one big fellow I saw was allowing a shrapnel hole in his hand to keep him from taking part in the games On their bulletin board in the Y.M.C.A. were pieces of verse they had written in the trenches