WRITE FROM FRANCE

Plymouth County Soldiers Tell of Life At Front
See Many German Prisoners

One Tells of Being Billeted in a Historic and Picturesque Old French Building

Boys Are Boosters For the Y. M. C. A. Workers

A member of Battery F, First Regiment, F.A.R.D., Camp Jackson, S. C., sent the Sentinel the following story concerning a Merrill boy :

"This is a plain tale and soon told, as old Kipling used to delight in saying before the war changed his style and methods of administering his punches.

Came out of Merrill, Iowa, one morning early in April, a youngster stocky of build, cheerful of disposition and smiling countenance. He and many other Iowans were volunteering for the service. They were to go to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wis., for special training in a government course.

The boy was Ernest W. Hauswald. He didn't know a machine gun from a custard pie or a six inch howitzer from a mothball in winter time. But he kept his mouth shut and his chin and chest out and rapidly they turned him into a soldier.

Two months after he'd entered the army he was sent across country diagonally to this South Carolina camp. Two weeks after he had been assigned to a battery of heavy field artillery he had been promoted from private to mess sergeant, one of the highest non-commissioned officers in the army.

His business is to see that 300 husky artillerymen are kept satisfied three times a day and are kept husky day in and day out. He orders the food for this crowd, superintends it's cooking and serving, buys when the market is right, saves money for the battery fund by his administrative ability. In fact, his position calls for the genius and ability of a manager of a good sized metropolitan hotel.

And everyone from the battery commander to the lowest private in the rear rank swears to the fact that Mess Sergt. Hanswald has that ability.

Which all goes to prove that in the army of democracy these days it's worth that brings reward and mighty rapidly, too."




-source: LeMars Sentinel Newspaper, LeMars, Plymouth Co., Iowa;  10 September 1918