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- I I I —P———M——■MANLIUS SOLDIERWRITES OF LIFEFOLLOWING WARAY. IT. Dabler Receives futer-estirr Letter From His Son,Sergeant II. L. Dabler, Why/1is Still Oversea-‘j,IN ACTIVE SERVICEExperiences of American Expeditionary Force* Since Enemy AskedArmistice Described by Writer.IjfIenaeslt;wS(\vefiaiolfiwHarry Dabler. of Manlius, has written the following letter to his father, W. H. Dabler:Dear Dad:Just received your letter of January 20th the first of the week. There seems to have been a very great delay in the mail written about the first of November as 1 have heard from several sources in ♦he states that my letters have not been received until two months later.# Hope the future holds better prospects Your mail has been coming through in very prompt time the last month or so, sometimes within IS cr 20 days.Not much news at the present time and the excitement of going home has kind of died down. Everyone in camp is busy getting the material ready to ship back to the States and it Is caving here at the average of 40 tc b0 carloads a day. At that rate it wi take about three months .to cleai the camp out.We had quite n fire in cam1) a week ago this morning. The building in which all the food stuffs were kept caught fire about 4 a.m. arui I ( was a total loss i was sleeping in the Post Supply lailding not morel] than i00 feet distant and was awakened by the guard firing and was out to the fire not more than two or three minutes later and even then the building was a mass of flames and no hope of saving it. There was I , a very high wind almost directly toward our building and it looked veryl j. shaky for us for a while, hut our building had stone walls and an asbestos roof, which is all that saved it. Outside of Post headquarters it was about the most important building in camp and we lost ail the rec-l^ ords of the quartermaster depart- Lment. ^ JThere was one small fire earlier! in the same night and a few days later an alarm was turned in for the Base Hospital but it was put out before any damage was done.I was just over to Gievres this afternoon, the first time for several months, and was dumbfounded at the immense amount of stores they have in the warehouses there. There are miles and miles of warehouses, all filled to capacity and hundreds of j tents put up for temporary shelter, with every conceivable thing under the sun from heavy artillery field pieces to shoe nails. Their railroad yards are as large as some of the terminal yards in the states and they I 7 do most of their switching over a hump. The only difference is that they use the French coupling — a link and hook — instead of the automatic coupler of the States. Gievres is, I believe, the largest supply | ^ depot in the A. E. F. It is here that they have the largest ice plant in the] pj world, built and operated by Americans, which you have probably read I ^ of in the papers. | caWell, I see President Wilson expects, in all probability, to return! 71 to the States today or tomorrow. I gt don’t think it will take him very (da long to straighten out the hunch of calamity howlers we have in the con-| Hi gress, with a few well directedwords. | wjI hope to get three-day pass to Paris sometime next week as I have 1 pr my application in now. I believe I have a very good chance of having it granted as I haven’t been on a leave since reaching France and will have been entitled to three of them the 4th of March. We sewr on our second service stripe the 4th—one year in France—and it certainly doesn’t seem that long.I have learned considerable of the French roads. They are very good roads, excellent roads for the traffic the French put on them, hut they won’t stand up under such wear and tear as they would get in the States. They are all macadam, and the States are making a mistake if they put down any other kind of a road than concrete with plenty of depth to the bed. We have a good example of it right here in camp, the road running from here to Romorantin.The heavy trucks pound the road full of holes in a very short time, especially during the rainy weather.We have had a touch of quite coldweather, freezing ice two or three inches thick, which is rather unusual for this part of France, so I am told.I sent the helmet about two weeks ago so it should be showing up soon after this letter. 1 will try and get around to packing up an American gas mask and send that. The men have been authorized to take their helmets and masks home with them as personal property.Write when you have time.Love to all,HARK Y.February 14. 1919.Serg t. Harry L. Dabler,486th Aero Squadron,A E. F.WJogPJ o W Al ehFrPaseivisofpaedMefrowaWidamepatP u Jai1Hama h i 1enimuVISof
Newspaper Details
Princeton Bureau County Tribune
Princeton, Illinois, US
Fri, Mar 28, 1919
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Vivian W.
USA 29 Mar 2020
Other Publications Near Princeton, Illinois
Princeton Bureau County Record
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Princeton Bureau County Tribune
