This Fourth of July had perhaps the most amazing yet terrifying “fireworks show” that I have ever seen. Just last night at a supposedly “safe” base camp I experienced my first air raid from German airplanes. I would like to lie and say how brave that I acted and maintained my composure throughout the night of the raid however I can do no such thing. I was so uncontrollable that it took numerous men just to attempt to calm me down. All I can remember is that we were just about to sit down for our dinner in a cleared section of woods at dusk when I heard the lookout yell “Raid! Air-Raid! Get Cover” the bullets and explosives exploded all around me causing me to seek cover under the table that was set up for the cooks to prepare the meals on. The shrapnel from the bullets and bombs were flying all around me and I escaped with a mere splinter in my leg. On that day we lost seven soldiers from our battalion, the cook, and an officer named Briggs. After this any sound that I heard or any shell that exploded within miles caused me to slip back into uncontrollable panic and hysteria. I do not even want to think about what the front-line will be like. There is a funny story that happened today though. Since today was the fourth of July our battalion thought it would be nice if we celebrated ol’ lady liberty by firing some shots in the air and throwing some grenades while hooting and hollering. After a few minutes of our ruckus I noticed rifle muzzles surrounding our camp, fearing the Germans had heard our celebration and about to massacre us, yelled out to take cover. Well we all took cover until we realized that they were nothing more than some tummies trying to figure out what the ruckus was about. Their commanding officer obviously had some choice words for us but we just glad that we were safe and continued on celebrating Uncle Sam’s birthday. Well I must get some shut-eye because it will be the last that I will get for a while for tomorrow we head to the front.
Sincerely, Charles Jefferson
