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Thursday, 15th 
No. 10
Dear Emma and Children:
This is a very beautiful day in the shade. The sun is hot, and the roads very dusty.
There is a great movement in the army the last three days. Men from the front are being relived by new divisions-all Americans. This section has practically changed from a French sector to an American sector. So I think we will soon be moved since we are a French foyer. The French living around here are very fine to the Americans. They are a rough lot of boys and do not care how they look or where they are going. This, to my mind, is what did the trick. In this great drive, I have met many boys just back from the front (which was only about 8 kilometers at the beginning) who had given all idea of ever seeing home again. They just rushed pell-mell into the fight. Many times the Fritzes thought according to academic warfare. The Americans should re-treat, but they could not stop the boys, and they have (the boys) left us all behind. We cannot buy anything that the boys need the most or what they crave for.
All our villages about here are demolished. The civilians are coming back and trying to straighten out their affairs. Soon everything will be in good order, and everybody that has anything to do with the Army will move forward. Monday and Tuesday I took a trip up near the lines in an auto truck. Stayed two days and the way the Americans are cleaning up the Fritzes is great. Some places where we passed we could see the Fritzes must have been on the run, but other places a stand had been taken and very severe fighting had taken place. Some villages were completely wiped off the map. The Germans had been in the habit of putting their officers in Chatueaus, our fine buildings and even churches. And the French have never been inclined to destroy them, but the American soldiers bombarded these fine places as well as the others. There is no use to try and use any other method except their own to simply crush them.
I made some sketches while up there of ruins and wrote all about my trip which you will see later. Ammunition, guns, broken wagons, cars, everything of the Army lying in the fields. Many great wheat fields had been torn up by the Ofus (*C.O.) The ? by the Americans were so accurate that the great Ofus (*) had fallen about 12 yeards apart over great fields as far as you could see. I walked all around Fairet Tardenois which is completely ruined. I slept on a lounge in the hallway of a ruined house. In the graveyard (French) much damage was done, but the Germans had buried their Fritzes next to the French in nicely laid out rows and a cross at the head of each one.
I am sitting in the door of our foyer now where we take turns in selling tickets to the soldiers passing by. And from the door I see and hear the racket of wagons of artillery auto cars and calvary passing to the rear. These are men that are being relived. They have been very much shot up full of many interesting stories