Plattsmouth Journal, Monday, March 18, 1918 ANOTHER LETTER FROM FRANCE >From Thursday�s Daily. Somewhere in France. February 10, 1918 Dear Mamma and All, Today is Sunday and a long lonesome day, so will try and write some letters. I received your letter of December 31, some two weeks ago, and the one of Dec. 24, that you and Papa both wrote, yesterday, so you see how irregular our mail comes. I was sure glad to get them. We all like to get mail from home. If you could see us when the bugle blows mail call you would think so. You are always kicking about me not writing much and you never write more than three pages. I owe every one a letter now, so will try and answer them today. I got a letter from Thor. He was back in Chicago on a visit, got one from Omar and received the $5.00 for the camera. American money sure looks good and every one in the company had to have a look at it. French paper money looks like some of our soap wrappers. The French sure are fine people and will do anything they can for us. Any of them will do our washing for a couple of franks which amounts to 40 cents in our money. I am learning to talk a little of their language, am visiting with them this morning and am writing on a real table by a fire place. Everything is old fashion over here and reminds me of stories I have read of olden times. The buildings are all made of stone and they say they are from eight to ten hundred years old. We have only been in this camp one week. We hiked from the other place to here in two days, it was about 35 miles. My feet stood the trip fine. The first camp were were in I was on military police duty for 18 days, was on at Christmas time. The cooks sure fixed us up a fine dinner. We had fig pie and turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and coffee. We all had a good time, but once in a while we would think about where we was last year and about the dinner that mother could make, was glad to hear that you and papa belonged to the Red Cross. Yes, I was remembered by them. I got a sweater, a pair of wool socks and a pair of gloves. Yesterday afternoon I took out $10,000.00 of war risk insurance. If I get totally disabled, I will draw $57.50 a month as long as I live and if I get picked off you will draw $57.50 a month for 20 years. It is a pretty good thing and after the war I can drop it or keep it up just as I please. I could have my policy kept at Washington D.C. or sent to you so I ordered it to be sent to you but it will be quite a while before you get it, maybe a month. The allotment I made to you was not made out right so it did not go, so I will make out another. An allotment is having so much of our pay sent home. I don�t need all of mine over here, so I will have some of it sent to you to take care of for me, so when I get back I will have enough to buy a new suit anyway. I got a letter from Wayne the other day. He seemed to be pretty well worked up, he said for me to hold out as long as I could and wait till company C got over here with their six-inch guns. He said that they would blow them all to ----. Well this is all the news I can think of for this time. I think I will quit writing letters and mail cards from now on and if you don�t hear from me as often as you think you ought, don�t worry and don�t think that I have forgotten you. With love from, RALPH ALLEN. O.K. F.D. Logan [censor] 1st Lieut. 168th Inf. Plattsmouth Journal, Monday, April 29, 1918 BOYS FROM HERE HAVE BEEN IN BATTLE OVER THERE LETTER FROM RALPH ALLEN WRITTEN APRIL 3 TELLS OF EXPERIENCES. Eight Plattsmouth Boys are Seeing Active Service in the World�s Greatest of Battles. >From Friday�s Daily. A letter received yesterday, written on April 3rd, from just behind the lines in France, tells of how the boys from here are faring. The letter was from Ralph Allen, and tells of their having been at the front and having served their stated time in the trenches, being at the time of writing in the resting camps behind the lines while others took their places in the trenches. At the time of writing but minor engagements had been had in this sector, but since then and within the past week it has been one of the places picked out by German generals to share the heavy brunt of the terrific onslaught of the German troops and without doubt the boys have had a real taste of what it all means ere now. In the letter, Ralph states that the boys from here are all well and feeling fine. His own birthday occurred on March 22, and he said he would tell his mother when he returned how he spent the day. He also said he had received a present on that occasion but it was not like the cake which had been given him a year ago. It is a matter of great satisfaction to the many friends and relatives of the boys from here, to know that they were all feeling well and enjoying life in France at such a late date as April 3 and it is probable they all continued in that state as no word has been received to the contrary. They boys from here who are serving with Iowa companies at the front are Ralph ALLEN, Ralph LAIR, Hugh KEARNES, Albert KEARNES, Eddie RIPPLE, Wm. HOFFMAN, Earl MURRAY and Alfred WILSON. Plattsmouth Journal, Monday, June 17, 1918 LETTER FROM RALPH ALLEN IN FRANCE WRITES TO MOTHER HERE UNDER DATE OF MAY 23RD. � IN FRONT LINES. ALL PLATTSMOUTH BOYS WELL And Glad to Be Able to Do Their Bit Toward Licking Army of the Kaiser. >From Friday�s Daily. France, May 21, 1918 Dear Mother, Tuesday morning, will drop you a line. I got back from the front a few days ago, got a few good nights sleep, took a bath and am boiling up now to get rid of some coolies, have been up four times now and am feeling fine. We are not camped in a timber and its sure a beautiful place. You have to hand it to France for being a beautiful country. Its enough to make a fellow home sick for old Nebraska. Your last letter received while I was in the front line trench. The hash carriers brought it out to me one evening about 6 o�clock. It sure is great to get a letter from home at that time. That shows what Uncle Sammjy does for us over here. I got a letter from aunt Mittee but she never said much, only that they had moved to town and that Harry and Ern were away working on the railroad. I suppose you have heard about our service stripes. We get a service stripe for every six months service on foreigh soil and in the [illegible] half an inch wide and in a V shape, to be worn of the left arm at the cuff point down, and the wounded stripes are to be worn on the right. When they are a strait gold stripe, we will get our service stripe the last of this month. Some of the boys have them now, that beat us over. After dinner. Will finish this letter up and get it off. It has to be censored by one of our officers, but the ones you send are never censored. Well its about time you are receiving my allotment. It started the first of February. Will soon be four months. I also took out $10,000.00 insurance. The policy will be sent to you. Did you ever hear from Milo? I wonder if he has come over here yet. The last time I heard from Wayne he was expecting to come over soon. Well I will close for this time. If anyone wants to know how the other Plattsmouth boys are, tell them they are all well and feeling fine. Answer soon, as ever, RALPH H. ALLEN Here is a sample of some of my shooting, 15 shots at 50 yards with my Springield rifle. Do you think they would count? Plattsmouth Journal, Monday, November 4, 1918 CORPORAL WAYNE ALLEN IS NOW IN ENGLAND. >From Saturday�s Daily. Corporal Wayne Allen, who has been at Camp Cody and later at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and still later at Camp Dix, N.J., where for the past year he has been engaged mnost of the time teaching drilling instructions to troops, has arrived at England where he is with the other troops and is safer for the fray. He is also eager to get over [illegible] and meet with his brother Ralph Allen who has been there and is in the thickest of the fray for many months. Plattsmouth Journal, December 23, 1918 [ Ralph Allen�s letter appeared with Henry Lamphaer�s letter on this date] Ralph Allen Writes �Dad�s� Letter November 24th Dear Dad, Mother and All: Sunday evening, still at the hospital, but feel fine. Well they tell us not to write where we have been and the battles we were in, but I do not think the red Cross has paper enough for all that. The last front I was on was Verdun and the Argone [sic], and where some of the hardest fighting took place of any place in the war. Before the Armistice was signed we had them out in the open and running, and many down on their knees begging for mercy, others had thrown their guns and helmets away and were running like jack rabbits. The hardest battle we were in was at Chateau Thierry, you know all about that so I do not need tell you, only to recall what Sherman said, �War was Hell,� but let me tell you he did not know anything about war then, it has changed so. We had just taken a town on the Toul [sic] sector, about the size of Plattsmouth when the civilians came out of their cellars, and crawled out from under their house, the women coming and kissing our hands and crying for joy, while the old gray headed men would hobble around and hollow for Americans. If you did not watch them they would cut buttons off your clothes for souvenirs. The Red Cross has set today for �Dad�s Xmas Letters.� I am sending you a map of the Mihial drive, the dotted lines where we started, and the heavy link where we stopped, and I want to say, we did not stop because we could not go any farther, but because we had orders not to go farther then. I believe we could have taken them to Mets. the way we had them going. We were three days making the drive, we had told around we were going to make the drive on the 15th but pulled it off on the 18th, and this surprised the helmies. We hiked about 5 miles the night before in the rain, and went into the trenches at about midnight at Breassette [sic] ; we had some good artillery behind us, the 151 Minnesota light, the 150 Indiana heavy, some French Naval guns 16 and 18 inches, all of them opened up at one o�clock, and kept up the bombardment until five in the morning, when they lifted the barrage and �Over the Top� we went. The Germans had held the trenches since the beginning of the war, and that was to be an active front. There was a large hill two miles from the line of the German side. It was called Mt. Sank, the French tried to take the hill in 1915; they took the hill and held it twenty minutes and lost 35,000, and then fell back. That did not sound right to us, but the French told it themselves for an absolute fact. We and the 167 infantry, the Alabama boys took the hill and had the �Botche� going down the other side by ten o�clock. When we got over the hill we believed what the French had said, for we found piles of bones, French helmets and rifles scattered everywhere. Then, the evening of the 14th of September, we took the little town of Bine, advanced about a mile, then dug in for the night. This is where we stopped, and held the line. About 12 o�clock that night the cooks seat us up a feed, boiled beef, potatoes, and bread and coffee, and say, you ought to have seen us eat. We held that line for about seven or eight days and were relieved by the 83 brigade. Went back then, and got some new clothes, a bath and a pay day, and had a few days to ourselves and then went to the Verdun front,, where we stayed until the finish. Well I suppose you are tired of reading war news by now. I know I am tired of writing it and I will ring off. I wrote Wayne a letter today. I was talking to a fellow out of the 100th engineers that was down at Deming, N. Mex., he told me that 137th artillery had just come over, so I addressed it over here. If I knew just where they were I would try and get a pass and go see them. Well I will close now with the same address, wishing you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. Your son, RALPH H. ALLEN __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com