July 27, 1918 – Full diary entry:

“It is only a short time now until my dear wife will need all the encouragement I can give her. I will write to her real often. How I love her.”

While Robert’s First Battalion was up the mountain at Camp Boussat, the rest of the 140th was downhill in the trenches. Chaplain Edwards, in From Doniphan to Verdun, has a hilarious story about their arrival:

We had been carefully censored and concealed since the day we left Camp Mills. Our marches were made at night. We never knew where we were. The morning after we took our position a sign was hung on the German wire reading “Welcome 35th Division, let’s be friends.”

This same story appears in Reminiscences of the 137th Infantry, by Carl Haterius – but with an important coda:

Not to be outdone, some of our boys ran up a reply: “Go to H—–! We came to fight.”

Where was Robert today? See the timeline.