MOORE, Logan - WWI - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Letter to his mother from Corp. Logan Moore

May 27, 1919 – Tours, France

Dear Mother: I will now try and write you a letter as I have nothing to do at present and have just got back from an evening’s stroll.  It sure is great here now as the rains come few and far between.  How is everyone by this time. OK I hope. I am feeling good.  I placed my application to come home but don’t know whether it is going through or not.  

I was on a two days pass over Sunday, leaving here at 3:30 Saturday afternoon, going to Paris and leaving there at 6:15 Sunday morning for Rheims, going through Chateau Thierry, having an hour there and then going on to Rheims, and believe me it sure was some trip. Rheims as you know was the scene of several hard fought battles between the French and Germans and you can sure see the effects of the war there. Rheims before the war was a city of about 150,000 and a very fine one at that but now everything is desolute, walk down the streets and you can see nothing but ruins and a vew people except sight seers and a few people that live there. Every building is almost a complete ruin, the Cathedral, one of the three best in France is nothing but a dangerous ruin now. Statues on the streets with bullet holes in them, millions of holes in the walls of the buildings where the bullets have struck, machine gun bullets. At the edge of the city these large gun implacements that you have heard of probably, showing how well the city was protected.

Then on to the spot called No Man’s Land, a stretch of country about 4 miles long and 1 or 2 miles wide stand on the hill at the edge of the city and look out over this, all you can see is barbed wire and trenches, almost impossible to get through and we didn’t but went around the road which cuts down through one side of No Man’s Land going down this road look over to the right and over in the field, surrounded by barbed wire and trenches, stands a deserted German Tank, a grim old sight that could tell a wonderful tale if permitted to talk.

Going out farther we pass an ammunition storage station where the French guard thousands and thousands of shells of all sizes, these they picked up off the field. Down the edge of this road on both sides runs trenches well barricaded and Camouflage still up on the trees where it did its duty as a screen to the passing trucks and troops. Going on farther to the old Fort which is about four miles from the city, we come up on the ruins of a one time strongly fortified fortress, but now completely in ruins, tunnels running through it in all directions, “Duds” or shells which never exploded laying about in the holes. We did not get to visit the trenches surrounding this fort but am sorry we did not for there are things to see there that one would always remember.  We only had a few minutes here as we walked and it being so far we had to start back immediately, the impressin I would like to leave is the loneliness that holds away over this once lively community. Chateau Thierry is not so bad as Rheims but it is bad enough, the bridge where the Second Division did its work and even both sides of the river show the effects of the conflict and also shows the things the soldiers had to put up with in this battle, all I can say is, honor the men that took part in this war, they deserve it. On the way from Chateau Thierry to Rheims you can see where the battle line extended along the railroad track for the river while the Allies held the other. There are several towns on the side of the river that the Germans held and they are all in ruins, there are also hundreds and hundreds of shell holes dotting the landscape along the machine gun nests can be seen, you can also see numerous graves along the line of battle, in one place a big square place where there are four soldiers, sticks are sticking up from the ground and helmets hung on them, then there are several single graves with helmets marking their place. The Hindenberg line is only a short ways from the old fort I was telling of but we did not get to see it for the time was too short. I am sending some Postal Cards of the two places, Chateau Thierry and Rheims, and you can get some idea of the destruction for I can not describe it as it really is.  

Then we came back to Paris and here spent another night as we missed the train that was to bring us back Sunday evening. The Saturday night I spent there we took in the Follies at the Theatre and then strolled over the city, that is, one or two blocks out of a million for it would take several weeks to see Paris and see everything but nevertheless, I septn two evenings in gay Paree. Well, Mother, I haven’t anything else to write of now so expect I had better quit. With Love, Your Son, Logan.  Corp. Logan Moore, MD; OCS Hq S OSAPO 717 Personel Dept.