Letters From the Front

Dated:

The Huntington Gleaner December 5, 1918

The meeting of two brothers

The Seller brothers had not seen each other for over four years. One belonging to a battery of horse artillery, the other an aviator, though laterally not far distant from each other, found it impossible to meet. Finally they arranged that when the artillery man, Watson, got his yearly leave, the aviator, Leslie, would get time enough off to meet him. He got word on November 3 that Watson was in London. Taking the first train to meet him Sunday afternoon, November 4. Leslie writes:

Perhaps we were not pleased to be together! I took him to the hotel I'd been put up at and roomed together. I'd been saving a box of maple sugar for two months for him, and a few days before Mr.T.B. Pringle had sent me a box of apples. Wat. went at them once or twice a day. Yet no plans, said he just wanted a bath and to sleep. He looks much the same as when he left home, but older and not so lively, tho before we parted he had picked up quite a bit. He is thinner but stronger and tough as a chunk of sole leather. He can carry 200 lbs. with ease. In one ear he is rather deaf caused by shell shock, but claims it will wear off. He is had a touch of gas and has been through the very worst of the fighting and God alone knows how he escaped. He has had several marvelous escapes not only of himself but of the entire battery. No wonder he slept to the middle of the next day, for he had passed his nights for nigh a year in dugouts and mud holes. He has had a hard life of it and it has left its mark on him. He was in all General Haig's big fights - the Somme, in both the battles of Vimy, Hill 60, Regina trench, Scarpe, Armetieres, Passchendaele, Amiens, and many more. Their battery was kept on the move and went with the infantry at the front. In one movement the battery was left behind to hold the enemy up for a little to let the Army get to a new position and was to have been a sacrifice for them. For some unknown reason, the Germans stopped their advance and the battery escaped. He has on two occasions had horses shot under him, has been thrown from the front of his gun, over and behind it. All of his chums who went with him from Regina are either wounded or gone west -- as soldiers called death. He is the oldest member of his battery and has charge of a gun. He could easily get a commission but does not want one. When my time was up we parted, he going on a trip to Ireland. He will visit me at the flying camp before going back to France where, I think, the fighting is over.
Leslie