Viewing page 134 of 171

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

February 15, 1974.

Dear Wanda, Jessica and Ted:

Early in WW1 the Germans drove a wedge between the French fortresses of Verdun and Toul. Both are on the Meuse river, which at Toul is flowing westward. Then near a town called St. Mihiel it turns north, where about 20 miles downstream it passes Verdun. The Germans reached St. Mihiel, and the wedge of territory they had captured was thereafter called the St. Mihiel salient. The Germans held it until September of 1918, after vainly trying to widen it in 1916 by their bloody assaults on Verdun.

During its first weeks at the front the 88th squadron operated on the south face of the St. Mihiel salient. Our airfield at Ourches, also on the Meuse, was 6 or 7 miles west of Toul. In those days of early summer the sector was as quiet as the one in Champagne ^[[had]] been during my stay with the French. We suffered no casualties. The German chasse bothered us very little. They made passes on two occasions at our plodding old Sopwiths, but did not seem to be trying very hard for a kill. They left only a few innocuous bullet holes. I was absent at Cazaux for more than half of that period. On my return I recall flying over our beat, where the Germans held the high ground and looked down on the Americans and/or French. My missions there were uneventful, and I could not have had more than three or four.

More vividly I remember Toul, the first walled town I had ever seen from the air. The wall was almost a perfect circle, with four gates. When you see it from close range it turns out to be an embankment 15 or 20 feet high, and so thick that a roadway runs around the top. It dates, I understand, from the 17th century, the time of Louis XIV. The modern fortifications of Toul were mostly outside the city, in the innocent-looking hills that rise steeply and separately from the plain. I was told that inside each hill were elevator shafts living quarters, and tunnels leading to gun emplacements, all cut from the solid rock. All that was so camouflaged that you could see nothing warlike from the air.

Meanwhile the first drafted men from Tennessee had reached France in the 82nd division. It moved into line north of Toul, just to get broken in on a quiet sector. I don't recall how we made contact, but on the 4th of July I had lunch in Toul  with a friend