Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 261, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1918 — LETTER FROM JIM RHOADES. [ARTICLE]

LETTER FROM JIM RHOADES.

Prance, October 13, 1918. Dear Father and Mother: — Well, dear mother and father, this is Sunday night and raining, and plenty of mud. We worked hard all day today and when 5 o’clock came we were all ready to quit. It drizzled all day and was very cold. The boys worked out in it, laying under trucks all day. I let them off eight and ten at a time to go over to a Red Cross shower bath house for a bath, the first good bath I have had in three weeks, so feel pretty good tonight. Have heard lots of rumors of peace, but don’t know what foundation they have. Hope they are very good. As near as we can find out the Germans are retreating as fast as they cam. We expect to move on closer to /the new front very soon. The home boys advance so fast they are very hard to keep up with. Mother, if anyone asks you why I don’t write to them, tell them I haven’t the time only to write to my parents and relatives, if they want to know what is going on over here let them don the O. D. and come over and see for themselves, and go thru some of these hardships the rest of us are going thru for those we love at home. We had an air raid here the other evening. The Germans dropped four bombs very near our billet, but they are of no consequence unless they hit where you are, because a miss is as good as a mile, and they miss oftener i than they hit, so they don’t scare us. I Write and let me know all about the business, because I am very anxious to know how you are getting along, bi\t I don’t think it will be many months before I will be With you, at least we all have high hbpes of it.

I sent a truck out last week for straw and coal, straw for out beds and coal for the blacksmith forge, and they came back with both about 9 o’clock in; the evening. Everyone was in bed, but all got up to fill their bed sacks. t Can you imagine your oldest son tickled to death to get straw to sleep on, then today a bath? Most peculiar about the bath. J tell you there is something wrong—all these luxuries, in one week. Tell Harve Hemphill, if he is still there, I have two Davis BamivaMe welding outfits, but oxygen and acetylene gas are very hard to get. I had two tanks of each on the trucks when we received them, but we used those four in a little while, so Lieut. Murray went about 250 kilometres and got four more. There is plenty here but they wi'H not. let loose of it. Most of our work is trucks that have been hit by shells or by another truck; lots of radiator and motor work, relining brakes, because brakes are very essential things over here. Only today I saw one convoy go by here with four hundred White trucks in it and about fifteen feet apart going about twenty miles an hour, so you can readily see how important good brakes are. I have two men on the lathes that, can not be beaten. They can make anything on a lathe you ask them to, because you know over here we haven’t the repairs all ready made. We have to make them ourselves. Then comes the hard part, and that is getting the stock to make them from- Old farm machinery, old wagons, old bolts, old crow bars, and everything find in the shape of an iron rod we bring into the shop. If we want to make some special tiring on the lathe we first find out the dimensions of it, then send out what we call a high-grading party to find it, and very seldotn they return without the required material and lots more with it, so you see it is the same old story, ‘ everybody for themselves in this man’s army. Well, dear folks, I will dose with

love to all and a big good night. From your son, JIM. First K. T. Rhoades, 601 M. O. R. S., Army Artillery Park, First Army, American E. F., France, via N. Y.