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Conger Reynolds correspondence, June 1918
1918-06-04 Conger Reynolds to John & Emily Reynolds Page 2
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2. The colonel is one of the few national guard high officers who have succeeded in holding their jobs. He looks the soldier, and the way he dealt with things that came up while I was in his office I guess he knows his job. I had brought along the Sunday Registers that Ernest sent me, thinking I might turn them over to someone in the regiment who would enjoy them. I spoke to the colonel about it, and he said he would gladly take them and send them out to the Des Moines bunch. Reading matter, he said, was the one thing the men up there wanted. After that he told me where I'd find Clifford Powell whom I particularly wanted to see. Clifford was colonel of the cadet regiment when I was a cadet at the U and we were good friends through society affiliations. He came over as captain of the Council Bluffs company. The last time I talked to him was in the law office at Council Bluffs during the democratic convention there in 1914. Sunday I found him in a bare room in the third story of a shell shocked stone house. There was no glass in the windows and the walls were cracked and unadorned except for an oil painting of a very sour looking old woman. I think she must have bitten into a wormy apple just before the artist painted the picture. If I had been in that room, I should certainly have turned the painting to the wall. But Clifford probably had other things to worry about besides the paintings on the wall. I found him at a table, which, with a bed, and two chairs constituted the furnishings. He was agreeably surprised to see me and we had a good talk for a half hour or so with the distant "k-k-rump" of the guns furnishing the punctuation. As I found it getting time for me to go Clifford took me down and found in the same house a major whom I used to know in Des Moines. I had a chat with him too before I went. We talked about the situation on the front, about the past experiences of the outfit and what was ahead of them. It seemed rather odd, in comparison to previous meetings with the same men, to be discussing with them the habits of the Boche, gas projectors, night patrols, and other phases of this very real war so far from the home sod. At my leavetaking, Clifford suggested that we tarry not by the wayside on the road going out as the Boches were expert in raking that particular strip with shrapnel and high explosive. On the way up I had observed how it was camouflaged to screen it from observation and how the surface had been patched. So I passed the word to the driver. I was soon sorry I had done so. He took the old Cadillac along at a pace that made me fear much more that I should be hurled into the ditch than that we should be shelled. As a matter of fact we covered the ground without even hearing a shell. On the way back we passed through a cantonment in the woods, -- a very picturesque place. I think I shall never forget one picture that I saw there. It was after we had wormed up a hillside and were running along the edge. Looking down through the big trees I saw a long column of artillery moving on the road in the bottom of the ravine. The road was in the sunlight, and the dust was rising in little clouds. And across the road in the deep shade of the trees were the huts and the lazy columns of smoke from the kitchens. It was Minnesota in France. At division headquarters I picked up my correspondents and we started "home." It was Sunday afternoon and sunny. On such times all France comes out of doors. So we had to be careful driving through the villages
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2. The colonel is one of the few national guard high officers who have succeeded in holding their jobs. He looks the soldier, and the way he dealt with things that came up while I was in his office I guess he knows his job. I had brought along the Sunday Registers that Ernest sent me, thinking I might turn them over to someone in the regiment who would enjoy them. I spoke to the colonel about it, and he said he would gladly take them and send them out to the Des Moines bunch. Reading matter, he said, was the one thing the men up there wanted. After that he told me where I'd find Clifford Powell whom I particularly wanted to see. Clifford was colonel of the cadet regiment when I was a cadet at the U and we were good friends through society affiliations. He came over as captain of the Council Bluffs company. The last time I talked to him was in the law office at Council Bluffs during the democratic convention there in 1914. Sunday I found him in a bare room in the third story of a shell shocked stone house. There was no glass in the windows and the walls were cracked and unadorned except for an oil painting of a very sour looking old woman. I think she must have bitten into a wormy apple just before the artist painted the picture. If I had been in that room, I should certainly have turned the painting to the wall. But Clifford probably had other things to worry about besides the paintings on the wall. I found him at a table, which, with a bed, and two chairs constituted the furnishings. He was agreeably surprised to see me and we had a good talk for a half hour or so with the distant "k-k-rump" of the guns furnishing the punctuation. As I found it getting time for me to go Clifford took me down and found in the same house a major whom I used to know in Des Moines. I had a chat with him too before I went. We talked about the situation on the front, about the past experiences of the outfit and what was ahead of them. It seemed rather odd, in comparison to previous meetings with the same men, to be discussing with them the habits of the Boche, gas projectors, night patrols, and other phases of this very real war so far from the home sod. At my leavetaking, Clifford suggested that we tarry not by the wayside on the road going out as the Boches were expert in raking that particular strip with shrapnel and high explosive. On the way up I had observed how it was camouflaged to screen it from observation and how the surface had been patched. So I passed the word to the driver. I was soon sorry I had done so. He took the old Cadillac along at a pace that made me fear much more that I should be hurled into the ditch than that we should be shelled. As a matter of fact we covered the ground without even hearing a shell. On the way back we passed through a cantonment in the woods, -- a very picturesque place. I think I shall never forget one picture that I saw there. It was after we had wormed up a hillside and were running along the edge. Looking down through the big trees I saw a long column of artillery moving on the road in the bottom of the ravine. The road was in the sunlight, and the dust was rising in little clouds. And across the road in the deep shade of the trees were the huts and the lazy columns of smoke from the kitchens. It was Minnesota in France. At division headquarters I picked up my correspondents and we started "home." It was Sunday afternoon and sunny. On such times all France comes out of doors. So we had to be careful driving through the villages
World War I Diaries and Letters
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