The Adair News Adair, Iowa 19 July 1918

Base Hospital No. 8, June 24, 1918--I expect to be back in my Co. soon as I am nearly recuperated from the gun shot wound in left shoulder over a month ago. Pvt. Melvin Magarrell, M. G., 16 Infantry, A.E.F. via N. Y. Some months ago Merle Chestnut was one of the boys that quite the plow for the life of a soldier, leaving his mother a large farm to manage. She has been able to secure help most of the time, but at this harvest time, there being a shortage of labor, she found it difficult to get harvest hands. Adair at once volunteered to do the work, so last Monday John Newport, S. G. Hawkins and Warren Kinard each took a binder at about 11 a.m. and began cutting. As a "shocking crew" there appeared upon the golden field Arthur Wedemeyer, Arthur Kelsey, I. J. Swarzman, H. H. Hilficker, J. E. Gookin, Theodore Arnold, H. N. Geist, Wm. Brownlee, Pearce Newport, Arlie Newport and Dan Condon. These men had the job finished at 4:30 and everybody was delighted. Mrs. Chestnut most of all, and to prove it she served to them at noon a dinner that had no Hooverism in it at all. Yesterday afternoon about five o'clock the word went over the telegraph lines that the Allied forces fighting on the western front in France had driven the German army back ten miles on a front 40 miles long. The number of German prisoners captured was stated to be in excess of 50,000. Church bells in Adair rang for some time after the report was received here.

Transcribe and submitted by Cheryl Siebrass http://iagenweb.org/cass/