Feature Letter of September 6th, 2025
Moody, Cecil Tyrell
One day last week when I was riding on the ambulance, Fat Hamner (the first driver) and I decided we would stop at one of the miner's houses and get some eggs and chips before going back to the advance dressing station. We had just been paid and were crazy for a feed. The place where we stopped was one of a row of about twenty houses, all occupied by coal miners and their families. It was only a short distance from the line and Fritz had been shelling it for three days. When we got in the house there were four "Scotties" ahead of us with an order for eggs and chips. The old miner was peeling potatoes and his wife was cooking eggs. We had been there about five minutes when "crrruuummmp - an eight ounce shell landed on the road in front of the house. It blew the door down, smashed all the windows, half the roof caved in, and a lot of furniture was broken by a piece of shell and falling debris. But not a person in the house was hurt beyond being hit by a few falling pieces of brick and tile etc. The French man and women beat it, the women crying her head off. The Scotties went outside to look at the shell hole and then wandered off so Fat and I ate what was left of the eggs and chips and made a darn good meal of it. The house adjoining the one we were in suffered much worse. Half of it was blown down and a poor little baby about two years old was buried under the debris. It was a mean sight and hit me harder than any of the cases of wounded or killed that I've seen among soldiers.
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