France, May 23rd, 1916

Dear Brother

Received Your's and Mrs. Hill's letter from Buffalo, also the cigars which I am very thankful for. I also receives Mother's box the same day and every article came in useful. Extend my thanks to Mrs. McKay for the sugar. That luxury is certainly a souvenir in this country, it makes a person think of olden days. I suppose you and the Mrs. are settled down pretty well by this time, and happy in your new adventure.

We are having very nice weather here now to what we have been used to.

We go in the trenches tonight for eight days, this is our last time in this location. Each division has to put in three months here so our time is up when we come out this trip, and I guess we all will be shaking hands with ourselves when we are moving out. For this part of the line has not got a very good name amongst the troops that had been here.

We had pretty hard lucky the last time in which it was sixteens days. They bombarded us heavily for two hours just at sun down, after they thought they had killed us all our scared us out. They started coming over as soon as the shelling started. They were surprised to find us still on the job. Their officer and three others got in to our trenches but that was all, we checked their raid by rifle and machine gun fire. Our own camp had the honor of grabbing the prisoners. We gave the officer a pretty rough time of it, before our officer came around and took him away from us. He was wounded pretty bad in the legs, but will recover. He also was an Iron Cross man. He was taken down in front of our Colonel who asked him what he expected to find when he came over to our trench. Well he said he thought we would be all dead or deserted to the rear on such a bombardment. The colonel told him that he would find that his battalion was very much alive yet. He said he was awarded the Iron Cross for raiding trenches, and being so successful. Everyone rushed up to the front line even to the officer's cooks to reinforce us. The remainder of his men beat it back when we opened fire on them and a lot of them were counted for in No Man's Land. Our stretcher bearers were not in very good humor when they had to carry him out a long communication trench. Our casualties were pretty heavy from the shelling concussion. I see they are publishing the casualties in the paper there in a different away, and I guess it is just as well they do. This is one incident that happens about every time in.

We don't leave here till after dark and it is a long road to I guess I will close this for now. I will send you some post cards of the place we are at. Hoping you are all in the best of health and happy.

Love to All,
Bill