NEWS: J. Domer ZERBE Writes Home, 1918, Altoona, Blair County, PA

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DOMER ZERBE SENDS SOUVENIR OF BOCHES

Shoulder Strop from Teuton Prisoner Is Received from Sergeant-Major

  Sergeant Major J. Domer Zerbe, of headquarters company, Twenty-eighth 
division, American army, has sent two souvenirs to his father, J. A. Zerbe, 
1409 First street, which he obtained from a German prisoner at his camp 
recently.
  Enclosed in a letter written on August 3, the young officer states he took 
the strap, which bears a crown and several letters in red braid and a brass 
button with the kaiser's insignia, from the uniform of a grey-coat captured 
last month.  He also forwarded a field postal card of the type used by German 
soldiers.  Local residents of Teutonic ancestry and employed in the Pennsy 
shops told the young man's father that the uniform was that of the high class 
fighters of the fatherland.
  Germans are pouring into the camps by hundreds, the Altoonan wrote, and the 
Pennsylvania boys are helping their comrades in other divisions slaughter the 
kaiser's picked troops in vast numbers.  In concluding his communication, 
Zerbe wrote that Sergeant Shock, of Sunbury, had been instantly killed and a 
dozen others badly wounded by the bursting of a shell where they were 
standing.

Altoona Tribune, Saturday morning, August 14, 1918, page 10