THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
51 
A Nurseryman at the Front 
Co'jny of a letter received here from Private William Flcmer, Jr., 
with Section — U. -S'. A. /I. aS., now in France. 
“Somewhere in France.” November 21,1917. 
Your welcome letter of September 24th came quite 
a few days ago, having been six weeks on the way. Mail 
is quite a question here. Many letters never reach us at 
all and those that do are long in getting here. Perhaps 
things will be better when our new address is used. 
At last we are down to our regular work and really 
it is very interesting and I could not imagine a nicer 
branch to be in. Some sections are connected with base 
hospitals in the large cities. Others are doing the eva¬ 
cuation work from the first aid stations to the dressing 
stations, and again back to permanent field and base hos¬ 
pitals. The latter is what we are doing. On the ad¬ 
vance posts we can see and hear the shrapnel burst and 
can hear the patter of the machine guns at times. At 
night the star shells break and light up the surrounding 
country like an arc light. At present this is a quiet sec¬ 
tor so we have not had any real action and so far no one 
has received a scratch. We are exposed only to barrage 
fire. At times we make several trips from the posts back 
to the hospitals. We evacuate five field dressing sta¬ 
tions. Sometimes the twenty-four hour shift passes 
without a call. On clear days, which are few at this 
season, many aeroplanes can be seen and battles in the 
air are the main features. I have seen several and in 
nearly every case the gallant French aviators are vic¬ 
torious. A few of the “Boche” machines were brought 
down behind our lines and some of the boys have dandy 
souvenirs. It is great to see an encounter. They dart 
about like dragon flies and then the rattle of machine 
guns comes faintly down. If a cloud is near they man¬ 
euver for this cover, darting in and out until one gains 
the upper hand, and the other either falls or flees to 
the shelter of their territory. 
At our posts we are sheltered in dug-outs far from any 
stray shell. Here in camp, which is about eight miles 
behind the trenches, we have wonderful quarters, and the 
eats—well they are the best since we left home. We 
have a great French chef inherited from the Red Cross 
Section, No. 24. I have been out to the posts several 
times. Our numbers have been decreased to thirty-five 
men. We have twenty cars and four trucks, all of 
which can be used in cases of necessity. Our trip from 
the seaport to the base earnp and from there to our 
present loeation was made in the cars and we had a won- 
flerful time. Imagine any other troops moving that way. 
The cities we passed through and other details will have 
to remain untold until we meet again for the censor 
would not pass upon it. 
When we lost the ten men at the base camp, we also 
lost our American lieutenant. Don’t let it worry you, 
for we are under the command of a Lieutenant from old 
Section 24 and he is a prince, thoroughly familiar with 
all the tricks and turns of the game. We also have a 
French Lieutenant, two mechanics, two Corporals and 
one Sergeant, also the chef—all French and dandy fel¬ 
lows. 
This detached service is certainly great stuff. Every 
four months we have ten days permission, the time extra 
needed to reach our destination and a return ticket to 
boot. Only six men can go at one time. The first lot 
left yesterday headed for Paris and Nice. I go with the 
second crowd and leave camp the early part of December. 
I will write when away and tell you about it. 
Please remember me to all the dear folks way back in 
the good old U. S. A. and tell them I will write as often 
as possible. We won’t let the old flag touch the ground. 
Your sincere friend, 
“Bill” FlemeA. 
If any of Mr. Flemer’s nurseryman friends would like 
to write to him. His address is William Flemer, Jr., 
U. S.A.A.S. 24\523 
21 Hue Pinel 
B. C. Ill, 
Paris, France. 
New York, January 18, 1918. 
Dear Sir:— 
It has been forcibly brought to my attention that in 
the last thirty days or more, the conservation of fuel 
would be brought about to a very large extent if the 
people throughout the country, particularly in the rural 
districts, could be educated to the more general use of 
wood for fuel. 
It has not been so long since I was a lad and I lived on 
a farm and we used almost exclusively wood for fuel. 
The farmers in the fall used to cut down dead and partly 
dead trees and use the wood for fire wood. This I be¬ 
lieve has been largely done away with, but at the same 
time we cannot cut down our forests without replacing 
them. 
My idea in addressing you would be to see if you would 
take up with the proper authorities in Washington, the 
advocation of planting forest trees and shade trees of 
all kinds and descriptions suitable to the different local¬ 
ities throughout the United States by the farmers and 
nurserymen this spring because there will no doubt be a 
tremendous cutting down of trees following the fuel 
shortage this winter and of people making preparation 
for next year’s supply and unless something is done to 
replace them it will be eventually the lessening of our 
forest area. 
This thought occurred to me and I would be glad if 
you would take it up to the proper authority for advoca¬ 
tion of a general planting proposition in the spring. 
Yours truly, 
F. B. Vandegrift & Company;, 
William W. Rich, President. 
