PARIS — An American soldier who has just returned from the trenches to pass his Christmas in Paris gave the Herald the following story, which is typical of the spirit of the American troops in the trenches.

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“We were stationed in a very quiet sector of the front. The weather was bitterly cold, and we had the greatest difficulty in keeping ourselves from being frozen.

“In No Man’s Land there is a canal which separates our trenches from those of the enemy. This was frozen over, and one night last week, when it was covered with a mist, some of the boys who were tired of the inactivity jumped out of the trenches and went sliding. When the Germans began to fire, the boys returned and began throwing tin cans along the ice to draw the enemy’s fire.” — The New York Herald, European Edition, Dec. 26, 1917