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^[[27

27]]    March 30, 1974

Dear Alice:

Among the many books I discarded when I left Scarsdale was General Pershing's "My Experience in the World War".  As you may deduce from the title, it was written before they had begun to number world wars.  Now I wish I had kept it, to check on some details of these reminiscences.  At that time, 1967, I had no idea that I should ever be writing about my own experiences under Pershing's command.  I find now that memory sometimes fails me  For example I wrote you once that the First Division's attack on Cantigny was in April 1918, whereas it actually took place in May.

During the last ten days of July 1918 the Germans slowly withdrew northward from Chateau-Thierrry.  They planted numerous machine guns to cover their getaway.  The emplacements were so well camouflaged that they could rarely be spotted from the air.  American and French troops were pressing hard after the Germans, but their infantrymen had to offer themselves as targets to find out where the machine guns were.  So the operation was a costly one for the allies.  At Fere-en-Tardenois, nearly the middle of the salient, there is an American cemetery.  There is another at Belleau Wood.

We stayed at Francheville through July.  The front had been 20 miles away when we moved in there on July 7th. , and now it kept moving further from us.  Around the end of the month the Germans had reached and crossed the Vesle river.  That stream runs through Reims and thence flows westward to join the Aisne at Soisonns. 
The Germans decided to make a stand at Vesle and for six weeks they repelled American attempts to cross it.  General Bullard's Third Corps played a leading part in all that campaign.  One of its divisions was the 32nd, a National Guard unit from Wisconsin and Michigan.  It had some hard fighting in pursuit of the Germans as far as the Vesle.  There it was relieved about the middle of August.  Florence's brother Bernard was in the 32nd.  He was killed just south of the Vesle.  When Florence first told me about him she thought he had been killed at a village called Dravigny.  Later she heard that it was at another village, Chery-Chartreuve.  I knew both places well from the air, and in 1938 with Helen I revisited them.  Both had been