"So here we are carrying two of these human nose-bags. The first time we get into a mess of this here gas, somebody will send the order around to change masks in the middle of it—just to find out which is the best one."

The sergeant, with seeming malice, spat some of that fine cigarette on a roadside kilometer stone and closed the international prospects of the subject.

Our battery jangled through a tunnelled ridge and emerged on the other side just as a storm of rain and hail burst with mountain fury. The hailstones rattled on our metal helmets and the men laughed at the sound as they donned slickers. The brakes grated on the caisson wheels as we took the steep down-grade. The road hugged the valley wall which was a rugged, granite cliff.

I rode on ahead through the stinging hailstones and watched our battery as it passed through the historic rock-hewn gateway that is the entrance to the mediaeval town of Besancon. The portal is located at a sharp turn of the river. The gateway is carved through a mountain spur. Ancient doors of iron-studded oak still guard the entrance, but they have long since stood open. Battlements that once knew the hand of Vaubon frown down in ancient menace to any invader.



No Roman conqueror at the head of his invading legions ever rode through that triumphal arch with greater pride than rode our little captain at the head of his battery. Our little captain was in stature the smallest man in our battery, but he compensated for that by riding the tallest horse in the battery.

He carried his head at a jaunty angle. He wore his helmet at a nifty tilt, with the chin strap riding between his underlip and his dimpled, upheld chin. He carried his shoulders back, and his chest out. The reins hung gracefully in his left hand, and he had assumed a rather moving-picture pose of the right fist on his right hip. Behind him flew the red guidon, its stirruped staff held stiffly at the right arm's length by the battery standard bearer.

Both of them smiled—expansive smiles of pride—into the clicking lens of my camera. I forgave our little captain for his smile of pride. I knew that six weeks before that very day our little captain had fitted into the scheme of civilian life as a machinery salesman from Indiana. And there that day, he rode at the head of his two hundred and fifty fighting men and horses, at the head of his guns, rolling down that road in France on the way to the front.

In back of him and towering upward, was that historic rock that had known the tread and passage of countless martial footsteps down through the centuries. Behind him, the gun carriages rattled through the frowning portal. Oh, if the folks back on the Wabash could have seen him then!

We wound through the crooked narrow streets of Besancon, our steel-tired wheels bounding and banging over the cobblestones. Townsfolk waved to us from windows and doorways. Old women in the market square abandoned their baskets of beet roots and beans to flutter green stained aprons in our direction. Our column was flanked by clattering phalanxes of wooden-shoed street gamins, who must have known more about our movements than we did, because they all shouted, "Gude-bye."

Six weeks' familiarity between these same artillerymen on town leave and these same urchins had temporised the blind admiration that caused them first to greet our men solely with shouts of "Vive les Americains." Now that they knew us better, they alternated the old greeting with shouts of that all-meaning and also meaningless French expression, "Oo la la."

Our way led over the stone, spanned bridge that crossed the sluggish river through the town, and on to the hilly outskirts where mounted French guides met and directed us to the railroad loading platform.

The platform was a busy place. The regimental supply company which was preceding us over the road was engaged in forcibly persuading the last of its mules to enter the toy freight cars which bore on the side the printed legend, "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8."

Several arclights and one or two acetylene flares illuminated the scene. It was raining fitfully, but not enough to dampen the spirits of the Y. M. C. A. workers who wrestled with canvas tarpaulins and foraged materials to construct a make-shift shelter for a free coffee and sandwich counter.

Their stoves were burning brightly and the hurriedly erected stove pipes, leaning wearily against the stone wall enclosing the quay, topped the wall like a miniature of the sky line of Pittsburgh. The boiling coffee pots gave off a delicious steam. In the language of our battery, the "Whime say" delivered the goods.

During it all the mules brayed and the supply company men swore. Most humans, cognizant of the principles of safety first, are respectful of the rear quarters of a mule. We watched one disrespecter of these principles invite what might have been called "mulecide" with utter contempt for the consequences. He deliberately stood in the dangerous immediate rear of one particularly onery mule, and kicked the mule.

His name was "Missouri Slim," as he took pains to inform the object of his caress. He further announced to all present, men and mules, that he had been brought up with mules from babyhood and knew mules from the tips of their long ears to the ends of their hard tails.

The obdurate animal in question had refused to enter the door of the car that had been indicated as his Pullman. "Missouri Slim" called three other ex-natives of Champ Clark's state to his assistance. They fearlessly put a shoulder under each of the mule's quarters. Then they grunted a unanimous "heave," and lifted the struggling animal off its feet. As a perfect matter of course, they walked right into the car with him with no more trouble than if he had been an extra large bale of hay.

"Wonderful mule handling in this here army," remarked a quiet, mild-mannered man in uniform, beside whom I happened to be standing. He spoke with a slow, almost sleepy, drawl. He was the new veterinarian of the supply company, and there were a number of things that were new to him, as his story revealed. He was the first homesick horse doctor I ever met.

"I come from a small town out in Iowa," he told me. "I went to a veterinary college and had a nice little practice,—sorter kept myself so busy that I never got much of a chance to think about this here war. But one day, about two months ago, I got a letter from the War Department down in Washington.

"They said the hoss doctor college had given them my name as one of the graduates and the letter said that the War Department was making out a list of hoss doctors. The letter asked me to fill out the blank and send it to Washington.

"'Joe,' my wife says to me, 'this here is an honour that the country is paying to you. The Government just wants the names of the patriotic professional citizens of the country.' So we filled out the blank and mailed it and forgot all about it.

"Well, about two weeks later, I got a letter from Washington telling me to go at once to Douglas, Arizona. It sorter scared the wife and me at first because neither of us had ever been out of Iowa, but I told her that I was sure it wasn't anything serious—I thought that Uncle Sam just had some sick hosses down there and wanted me to go down and look them over.

"Well, the wife put another shirt and a collar and an extra pair of socks in my hand satchel along with my instruments and I kissed her and the little boy good-bye and told them that I would hurry up and prescribe for the Government hosses and be back in about five days.

"Two days later I landed in Douglas, and a major shoved me into a uniform and told me I was commissioned as a hoss doctor lieutenant. That afternoon I was put on a train with a battery and we were on our way east. Six days later we were on the ocean. We landed somewhere in France and moved way out here.

"My wife was expecting me back in five days and here it is I've been away two months and I haven't had a letter from her and now we're moving up to the front. It seems to me like I've been away from Iowa for ten years, and I guess I am a little homesick, but it sure is a comfort to travel with an outfit that knows how to handle mules like this one does."

The supply company completed loading, and the homesick horse doctor boarded the last car as the train moved down the track. Our battery took possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the animals into the box cars.

Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking on the part of the men as well as the animals.

I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses. The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men. I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the group,—backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.

I went to his assistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I washed his two scalp wounds with water from a canteen and applied first aid bandages.

"Just my luck," I heard my patient mumbling as I swathed his head in white strips and imparted to him the appearance of a first-class front line casualty.

"You're lucky," I told him truthfully. "Not many men get kicked in the head by a horse and escape without a fractured skull."

"That isn't it," he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off my head."

By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train examining the halter straps in the horse cars and assuring himself of the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what developed to be a wild night ride.

The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a horse and a man, if placed out in any large open space, are capable of getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them figuratively on the neck and tell them to lie down together and sleep through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases. The described condition does not encompass the best understood relation of the two as travelling companions.

On our military trains in France, the reservations of space for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space is reserved for the four two-footed animals.

Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central space. If the movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the central space. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the floor of the central space is a lively existence, while "riding the rattlers with a horse outfit."

Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting with four artillerymen in the central space between the side doors which had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by roping it off.

On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new fits of excitement.

We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.

"Yeah," observed Shoemaker, driver of the "wheelers" on No. 4 piece, "Yeah, but there ain't no mast to climb up on and get out of the way on in this here boxcar."

"I'd rather take my chances with a cannon any day," said 'Beady' Watson, gunner. "A cannon will stay put when you fix it. There's our piece out on the flat car and she's all lashed and blocked. It would take a wreck to budge her off that flat. I wish the B. C. had let me ride with the old gun out there. It would be a little colder but a lot healthier. Try to go to sleep in here and you'll wake up with a horse sitting on you."

"Where do you suppose we are going anyway?" asked Slater, fuse cutter in the same section. "I'm strong for travel, but I always like to read the program before we start to ramble. For all we know we might be on our way to Switzerland or Italy or Spain or Egypt or somewhere."

"Why don't you go up and ask the Captain?" suggested Boyle, corporal in charge of the car. "Maybe the Colonel gave him a special message to deliver to you about our dusty-nation. You needn't worry though. They ain't going to bowl us out of France for some time yet."

"Well, if we're just joy-riding around France," replied Slater, "I hope we stop over to feed the horses at Monte Carlo. I've heard a lot about that joint. They say that they run the biggest crap game in the world there, and the police lay off the place because the Governor of the State or the King or something, banks the game. They tell me he uses straight bones and I figure a man could clean up big if he hit the game on a payday."

"Listen, kid, you've got this tip wrong," said Shoemaker. "If there's anything happens to start a riot among these horses, you are going to find that you're gambling with death. And if we ever get off this train, I think we have a date with Kaiser Bill."

"I've got a cousin somewhere in the German army. He spells his 'Shoemaker' with a 'u.' My dad told me that my grandfather and this cousin's grandfather had a business disagreement over a sauerkraut factory some time before the Civil War and my grandfather left Germany. Since then, there ain't been no love lost between the branches of the family, but we did hear that Cousin Hans had left the sauerkraut business and was packing a howitzer for the Kaiser."

"Well, I hope we come across him for your sake," said Watson. "It's kinda tough luck to get cheated out of a big business like that, but then you must remember that if your cousin's grandfather hadn't pulled the dirty on your grandfather, your grandfather might never have gone to America and most likely you'd still be a German."

"I guess there's some sense in that, too," replied Shoemaker; "wouldn't that been hell if I'd been on the other side in this war? But anyhow, I do hope we run into Cousin Hans somewhere."

The horses had been comparatively quiet for some time, but now they seemed to be growing restless. They pricked their ears and we knew something was bothering them. The discussion stopped so that we could listen better.

Above the rattle of the train, there came to us the sound of firing. It seemed to come from the direction in which we were going. With surprising quickness, the explosions grew louder. We were not only speeding toward the sounds of conflict, but the conflict itself seemed to be speeding toward us.

Then came a crash unmistakably near. One of the horses in the forward end reared, and his head thumped the roof of the car. Once again on four feet, he pranced nervously and tossed his blood-wet forelock. Immediately the other horses began stamping.

Another crash!—this time almost directly overhead. In the light of the swinging lantern, I could see the terror in the eyes of the frightened brutes. We clung to their halters and tried to quiet them but they lifted us off our feet.

"Put a twitch on that one's nose and hold him down," Boyle ordered.

"Gosh," said Slater, obeying, "we must be right up on the front line. Hope they don't stop this train in No Man's Land. Hold still, you crazy b——"

"Cousin Hans must have heard you talking," Watson shouted to Shoemaker. "Maybe you're going to see him quicker than you expected."

The train was slowing down. The brakes shrieked and grated as we came to a jerky stop. Three of us braced ourselves at the heads of the four horses in the rear of the car and prevented them from sliding on top of us. Boyle and Slater were doing their best to quiet the forward four. The explosions overhead increased. Now we heard the report of field pieces so close that they seemed to be almost alongside the track.

There came a sharp bang at one of the side doors, and I thought I recognised the sound of the lead-loaded handle of the captain's riding whip. His voice, coming to us a minute later above the trampling and kicking of the panic-stricken animals, verified my belief.

"Darken that lantern," he shouted. "Keep all lights out and keep your helmets on. Stay in the cars and hang on to the horses. There is an air raid on right above us."

"Yes, sir," replied Boyle, and we heard the captain run to the next car. I blew out the light and we were in complete darkness, with eight tossing, plunging horses that kicked and reared at every crash of the guns nearby or burst of the shells overhead.

We hung on while the air battle went on above. One horse went down on his knees and in his frantic struggles to regain his feet, almost kicked the feet from under the animal beside him.

At times, thunderous detonations told us that aerial bombs were doing their work near at hand. We supposed correctly that we were near some town not far behind the lines, and that the German was paying it a night visit with some of his heaviest visiting cards.

I opened one side door just a crack and looked out. The darkness above blossomed with blinding blotches of fire that flashed on and off. It seemed as though the sky were a canopy of black velvet perforated with hundreds of holes behind which dazzling lights passed back and forth, flashing momentary gleams of brilliance through the punctures. Again, this vision would pass as a luminous dripping mass would poise itself on high and cast a steady white glare that revealed clusters of grey smoke puffs of exploded shrapnel.

We had to close the door because the flashes added to the terror of the horses, but the aerial activity passed almost as suddenly as it had come and left our train untouched. As the raiding planes went down the wind, followed always by the poppings of the anti-aircraft guns, the sound of the conflict grew distant. We got control over the horses although they still trembled with fright.

There came another rap at the door and I hurriedly accepted the captain's invitation to accompany him forward to a first-class coach where I spent the remainder of the night stretched out on the cushions. As our train resumed its way into the darkness, I dreamed of racing before a stampede of wild horses.



CHAPTER VII

INTO THE LINE—THE FIRST AMERICAN SHOT IN THE WAR

A damp, chill, morning mist made the dawn even greyer as our battery train slid into a loading platform almost under the walls of a large manufacturing plant engaged in producing war materials.

In spite of the fact that the section chiefs reported that not a man had been injured, and not so much as a leg broken in the crowded horse cars, every man in the battery now declared the absence of any doubt but the air raid had been directly aimed at Battery A.

"There might be a spy in this here very outfit," said 'Texas' Tinsdale, the battery alarmist. "Else how could them German aviators have known that Battery A was on the road last night? They knew we was on the way to the front and they tried to get us."

"Hire a hall," shouted the gruffy top sergeant. "We've got two hours to unload. A lot of you fireside veterans get busy. Gun crews get to work on the flats and drivers unload horses. No chow until we're ready to move out."

The sign on a station lamp-post told us the name of the town. It was Jarville. But it jarred nothing in our memories. None of us had ever heard of it before. I asked the captain where we were.

"Just about thirty miles behind the front," he replied. "We are moving up to our last billets as soon as we unload and feed."

The horses had made the ride wearing their harness, some of which had become entangled and broken in transit. A number of saddles had slipped from backs and were down behind forelegs.

"We're learning something every minute," the captain exclaimed. "American army regulations call for the removal of all harness from the horses before they are put into the cars, but the French have learned that that is a dangerous practice over here.

"You can't unload unharnessed horses and get them hitched to the guns as quick as you can harnessed horses. The idea is this. We're pretty close behind the lines. A German air party might make this unloading platform a visit at any time and if any of them are in the air and happen to see us unloading, they'd sure call on us.

"The French have learned that the only way to make the best of such a situation, if it should arise, is to have the horses already harnessed so that they can be run out of the cars quickly, hitched to the guns in a jiffy and hurried away. If the horses are in the cars unharnessed, and all of the harness is being carried in other cars, confusion is increased and there is a greater prospect of your losing your train, horses, guns and everything from an incendiary bomb, not to mention low flying machine work."

His explanation revealed a promising attitude that I found in almost all American soldiers of all ranks that I had encountered up to that time in France. The foundation of the attitude was a willingness to admit ignorance of new conditions and an eagerness to possess themselves of all knowledge that the French and British had acquired through bitter and costly experience.

Further than that, the American inclination pushed the soldier students to look beyond even those then accepted standards. The tendency was to improve beyond the French and British, to apply new American principles of time or labour-saving to simple operation, to save man-power and horseflesh by sane safety appliances, to increase efficiency, speed, accuracy—in a word, their aim was to make themselves the best fighting men in the Allied cause.

One instance of this is worthy of recounting. I came upon the young Russian who was the battery saddler. He was a citizen of the United States whose uniform he wore, but he was such a new citizen, that he hardly spoke English. I found him handling a small piece of galvanised iron and a horse shoe. He appeared to be trying to fit the rumpled piece of metal into the shoe.

In his broken English he explained that he was trying to fashion a light metal plate that could be easily placed between a horse's shoe and the hoof, to protect the frog of the foot from nails picked up on the road. With all soldiers wearing hobnailed boots, the roads were full of those sharp bits of metal which had caused serious losses of horseflesh through lameness and blood poisoning.

* * * * *

The unloading had continued under the eyes of smiling French girls in bloomers who were just departing from their work on the early morning shift in the munition factory beside the station. These were the first American soldiers they had seen and they were free to pass comment upon our appearance. So were the men of Battery A, who overlooked the oiled, grimed faces and hands of the bloomered beauties, and announced the general verdict that "they sure were fat little devils."

The unloading completed, a scanty snack consisting of two unbuttered slices of white bread with a hunk of cold meat and maybe the bite of an onion, had been put away by the time the horses' nose bags were empty. With a French guide in the lead, we moved off the platform, rattled along under a railroad viaduct, and down the main street of Jarville, which was large enough to boast street car tracks and a shell-damaged cathedral spire.

The remaining townsfolk had lived with the glare and rumble of the front for three years now and the passage back and forth of men and horses and guns hardly elicited as much attention as the occasional promenade of a policeman in Evanston, Illinois. But these were different men that rode through those streets that day.

This was the first battery of American artillery that had passed that way. This was an occasion and the townspeople responded to it. Children, women and old men chirped "vivas," kissed hands, bared heads and waved hats and aprons from curb and shop door and windows overhead.

There was no cheering, but there were smiles and tears and "God bless you's." It was not a vociferous greeting, but a heart-felt one. They offered all there was left of an emotion that still ran deep and strong within but that outwardly had been benumbed by three years of nerve-rack and war-weariness.

Onward into the zone of war we rode. On through successive battered villages, past houses without roofs, windows with shattered panes, stone walls with gaping shell holes through them, churches without steeples, our battery moved toward the last billeting place before entering the line.

This was the ancient town of Saint-Nicolas-du-Port on the banks of the river Meurthe. Into the Place de la Republic of the town the battery swung with a clamorous advance guard of schoolchildren and street gamins.

The top sergeant who had preceded the battery into the town, galloped up to the captain upon our entry and presented him with a sheaf of yellow paper slips, which bore the addresses of houses and barns and the complements of men and horses to be quartered in each. This was the billeting schedule provided by the French major of the town. The guns were parked, the horses picketed and the potato peelers started on their endless task. The absence of fuel for the mess fires demanded immediate correction.

It was a few minutes past noon when the captain and I entered the office of the French Town Major. It was vacant. The officers were at dejeuner, we learned from an old woman who was sweeping the commandant's rooms. Where?—Ah, she knew not. We accosted the first French officer we met on the street.

"Where does the Town Major eat?" the Captain inquired in his best Indianapolis French. After the customary exchange of salutes, introductions, handshakes and greetings, the Frenchman informed us that Monsieur Le Commandant favoured the pommard, that Madame Larue served at the Hotel de la Fountaine.

We hurried to that place, and there in a little back room behind a plate-cluttered table with a red and white checkered table cloth, we found the Major. The Major said he spoke the English with the fluency. He demonstrated his delusion when we asked for wood.

"Wood! Ah, but it is impossible that it is wood you ask of me. Have I not this morning early seen with my own eyes the wood ordered?"

"But there is no wood," replied the Captain. "I must have wood for the fires. It is past noon and my men have not eaten."

"Ah, but I am telling you there is wood," replied the Major. "I saw your supply officer pay for the wood. By now I believe it has been delivered for you in the Place de la Republique."

"But it hasn't," remonstrated the Captain, "and the fires have not yet been started, and——"

"But it is on the way, probably," said the Major. "Maybe it will be there soon. Maybe it is there now."

The Captain took another tack.

"Where was the wood bought?" he asked.

"From the wood merchant beyond the river," replied the Major. "But it is already on the way, and——"

"How do you go to the wood merchant?" insisted the Captain. "We have got to have the wood toot sweet."

"Ah! tout de suite—tout de suite—tout de suite," repeated the Major in tones of exasperation. "With you Americans it is always tout de suite. Here——"

He took my notebook and drew a plan of streets indicating the way to the place of the wood merchant. In spite of his remark and the undesired intrusion of business upon his dejeuner, the Major's manner was as friendly as could be expected from a Town Major. We left on the run.

The wood merchant was a big man, elderly and fat. His face was red and he had bushy grey eyebrows. He wore a smock of blue cloth that came to his knees. He remonstrated that it was useless for us to buy wood from him because wood had already been bought for us. He spoke only French. The Captain dismissed all further argument by a direct frontal attack on the subject.

"Avez-vous de bois?" asked the Captain.

"Oui," the merchant nodded.

"Avez-vous de chevaux?" the Captain asked.

"Oui," the merchant nodded again.

"Avez-vous de voiture?" the Captain asked.

"Oui,"—another nod.

"All right then," continued the Captain, and then emphasising each word by the sudden production of another stiff finger on his extended hand, he said, "Du bois—des chevaux—une voiture—de whole damn business—and toot sweet."

In some remarkable fashion the kindly wood merchant gathered that the Captain wanted wood piled in a wagon, drawn by a horse and wanted it in a hurry. Tout de suite, pronounced "toot sweet" by our soldiers, was a term calling for speed, that was among the first acquired by our men in France.

The old man shrugged his shoulders, elevated his hand, palm outward, and signified with an expression of his face that it was useless to argue further for the benefit of these Americans. He turned and gave the necessary loading orders to his working force.

That working force consisted of two French girls, each about eighteen years of age. They wore long baggy bloomers of brown corduroy, tight at the ankles where they flopped about in folds over clumsy wooden shoes. They wore blouses of the same material and tam o'shanter hats to match, called berets.

Each one of them had a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. One stood on the ground and tossed up the thirty or forty-pound logs to her sister who stood above on top of the wagon. The latter caught them in her extended arms and placed them in a pile. To the best of my recollection, neither one of the girls missed a puff.

While the loading proceeded, the wood merchant, speaking slowly in French, made us understand the following:

"Many peculiar things happen in the war, Monsieur," he said. "Your country, the America, is the land of wonders. Listen, my name is Helois. Ten days ago there came to me one of the washerwomen who clean the clothes on the banks of the Meurthe, and she said to me:

"'Ah, Monsieur, the wood merchant. You are the sly fox. I have your secret.' And I say to her that I know not of what she speaks.

"'You boast in the town that your two sons are at the front,' she said, 'but I know that one at least of them is not.' And I was dumbfounded. I say to her, 'Woman, it is a lie you tell me. Both of my boys are with their regiments, in the trenches even now, if by the grace of the good God they still live.'

"'No,' she say to me, 'one of your sons hides in the hotel of Madame Larue. How do I know this secret, Monsieur the wood merchant? I know because this day have I washed the shirt, with his name on it, at the river bank. His name, Helois,—the Lieutenant Helois—was stamped on the collar and the shirt came from the hotel, La Fontaine.'

"I tell her that it is a mistake—that it is the great injustice to me she speaks, and that night I dressed in my best clothes to penetrate this mystery—to meet this man who disgracefully used the name of my son—to expose this impostor who would bring shame to the name of Helois, the wood merchant, whose two sons have been fighting for France these three long years.

"And so, Monsieur, I meet this man at the hotel. She was right. His name was Helois. Here is his card. The Lieutenant Louis F. Helois, and he is a lieutenant in the United States Army."

"So it was a mistake," replied the Captain, handing the card back to the wood merchant, whose lobster red features bore an enigmatical smile.

"No,—not the mistake, the truth," replied the wood merchant. "Not my son—but my grandson—the son of my son—the son of my third son who went to America years ago. And now he comes back in the uniform of liberty to fight again for France. Ah, Messieurs les Officiers—the sons of France return from the ends of the world to fight her cause."

While the wood merchant was telling us that the American grandson had only stopped three days in the town and then had moved up to service at the front, the air was shattered by a loud report. It was the snap of the whip in the hands of the young French amazon, standing high on the load of wood. We escorted the fuel proudly to the Place de la Republique. Soon the fires were burning briskly and the smell of onions and coffee and hot chow was on the air.

The stoves were pitched at the bottom of a stone monument in the centre of the square. Bags of potatoes and onions and burlap covered quarters of beef and other pieces of mess sergeants paraphernalia were piled on the steps of the monument, which was covered with the green and black scars from dampness and age.

The plinth supported a stone shaft fifteen feet in height, which touched the lower branches of the trees. The monument was topped with a huge cross of stone on which was the sculptured figure of the Christ.

Little Sykoff, the battery mess sergeant, stood over the stove at the bottom of the monument. He held in his hand a frying pan, which he shook back and forth over the fire to prevent the sizzling chips in the pan from burning. His eyes lowered from an inspection of the monument and met mine. He smiled.

"Mr. Gibbons," he said, "if that brother of mine, who runs the photograph gallery out on Paulina and Madison Streets in Chicago, could only see me now, he sure would tell the Rabbi. Can you beat it—a Jew here frying ham in the shadow of the Cross."

It was rather hard to beat—and so was the ham. We made this concession as we sat on the plinth of the monument and polished our mess kits with bread. And such bread—it was the regulation United States army issue bread—white, firm and chuck full of nourishment—bread that seemed like cake to the French youngsters who tasted it and who returned with open mouths and outstretched hands for more of the "good white bread."

After the meal, those members of Battery A not detailed for immediate duty denied themselves none of the joys that a new town, in a strange land, holds for a soldier.

Saint-Nicolas-du-Port boasts a remarkable cathedral of mediaeval architecture, of enormous dimensions. It was crumbling with age, but still housed the holy. Time and the elements had left the traces of their rough usage upon the edifice.

Half of the statues on the broad facade of the cathedral had been broken, and now the niches afforded domiciles for families of pigeons. On the ground, in a careless pile, to one side of the frontal arch, was an ignominious pile of miscellaneous arms and legs and heads of sculptured figures, resting there in anything but saintly dignity. Two of our young artillerymen were standing in front of the cathedral surveying it.

"Certainly is in need of repairs," said one of them. "I'll bet they haven't done no bricklaying or plumbing on this place since before the Civil War."

"That ain't hardly the right way to treat old Saints," replied his companion, referring to the pile of broken statuary. "Seems like they ought to cement the arms and legs and heads back on those old boys and old girls and put them back on their pedestals. I guess, though, there ain't nobody living to identify the pieces, so they could get the right arms and heads on the right bodies."

Our battery had among its drivers an old timer who might have been called a historian. His opinion held weight in the organisation. He professed to be able to read American ball scores and war news out of French newspapers, a number of which he always carried. Later that day, I heard him lecturing the cathedral critics on their lack of appreciation of art and history.

"New things ain't art," he told them; "things has got to be old before they are artistic. Nobody'd look at the Venus dee Milo if she had all her arms on. You never hear nobody admiring a modern up-to-date castle with electric lighting and bath tubs in it. It simply ain't art.

"Now, this cathedral is art. This country around here is just full of history. Here's where whole book stores of it was written. Why, say, there was batteries of artillery rolling through this country a million years ago. It was right around here that Napoleon joined forces with Julius Caesar to fight the Crusaders. This here is sacred ground."

In the evening, a number of the battery, located the buvette that carried across its curtained front the gold lettered sign bar Parisian. It was a find. Some thirty American artillerymen crowded around the tables.

Cigarette smoke filled the low-ceilinged room with blue layers, through which the lamp light shone. In one corner stood a mechanical piano which swallowed big copper sous and gave out discord's metallic melody. It was of an American make and the best number on its printed programme was "Aren't you Coming Back to Old Virginia, Molly?" Sous followed sous into this howitzer of harmony and it knew no rest that night. Everybody joined in and helped it out on the choruses.

Things were going fine when the door opened at about nine thirty, and there stood two members of the American Provost Guard. They carried with them two orders. One instructed Madame, the proprietress, to dispense no more red ink or beer to American soldiers that night, and the other was a direction to all Americans around the table to get back to their billets for the night.

The bunch left with reluctance but without a grumble. It was warm and comfortable within the bar Parisian and Madame's smiles and red wine and beer and Camembert cheese composed the Broadway of many recent dreams. But they left without complaint.

They made their rollicking departure, returning Madame's parting smiles, gallantly lifting their steel helmets and showering her with vociferous "bong swore's." And—well it simply must be told. She kissed the last one out out the door and, turning, wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron. Madame had seen youth on the way to the front before.

The billets were comfortable. Some were better than others. Picket line details slept in their blankets in the hay over the stables. Gun crews drew beds and pallets on the floor in occupied houses. In these homes there was always that hour before retirement for the night when the old men and remaining women of the French household and their several military guests billeted in the place, would gather about the fireplace in the kitchen and regale one another with stories, recounted by the murder of French and English languages and a wealth of pantomime.

Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the town-crier—he who daily beat the drum in front of the Hotel de Ville and read lengthy bulletins, was interested in the workings of Gunner Black's colt automatic. Gunner Black, most anxious to show her, demonstrated the action of the pistol but, forgetting that inevitable shell in the chamber, shot himself in the arm.

It was only an incident. The noise scared Louise, but not the wound. She had seen too many Americans get shot in the moving pictures.

The captain and I were quartered in the house of the Cure of the cathedral. The old housekeeper of the place made the captain blush when she remarked her surprise that there were such young captains in the American army. Her name was Madame Dupont, and she was more than pleased to learn from the captain that that had been the maiden name of his mother.

The captain's room had the interior dimensions and heavy decorations of the mystic inner sanctum of some secret grand lodge. Religious paintings and symbols hung from the walls, which were papered in dark red to match the heavy plush hangings over the ever closed windows.

Two doors in the blank wall swung open revealing a hermetically sealed recess in which a bed just fitted. This arrangement, quite common in France, indicated that the device now popular in two-room sleeping apartments in America, must have been suggested by the sleeping customs of mediaeval times.

Early the next morning, our battery pulled out for the front. We were bound for the line. We took the roads out of Saint Nicolas to the east, making our way toward that part of the front that was known as the Luneville sector. Our way lay through the towns of Dombasle, Sommerviller, Maixe, Einville, Valhey, Serres, to the remains of the ruined village of Hoeville.

The sector runs almost along the border between France and old Lorraine, occupied by the Germans since 1870. Even the names of the old French towns beyond the border had been changed to German in the effort of the Prussians to Germanise the stolen province.

It was in this section during the few days just prior to the outbreak of the war that France made unwise demonstration of her disinclination toward hostilities with Germany. Every soldier in France was under arms, as was every soldier in Europe. France had military patrols along her borders. In the French chamber of deputies, the socialists had rushed through a measure which was calculated to convince the German people that France had no intentions or desire of menacing German territory. By that measure every French soldier was withdrawn from the Franco-German border to a line ten miles inside of France. The German appreciation of this evidence of peacefulness was manifested when the enemy, at the outbreak of the war, moved across the border and occupied that ten-mile strip of France.

France had succeeded in driving the enemy back again in that part of Lorraine, but only at the cost of many lives and the destruction of many French towns and villages. Since the close of the fighting season of 1914, there had been little or no progress on either side at this point. The opposing lines here had been stationary for almost three years and it was known on both sides as a quiet sector.

The country side was of a rolling character, but very damp. At that season of the year when our first American fighting men reached the Western front, that part of the line that they occupied was particularly muddy and miserable.

Before nine o'clock that morning as we rode on to the front, the horse-drawn traffic, including our battery, was forced to take the side of the road numerous times to permit the passage of long trains of motor trucks loaded down with American infantrymen, bound in the same direction.

Most of the motor vehicles were of the omnibus type. A number of them were worthy old double-deckers that had seen long years of peaceful service on the boulevards of Paris before the war. Slats of wood ran lengthwise across the windows of the lower seating compartment and through these apertures young, sun-burned, American faces topped with steel helmets, peered forth.

Some of our men reposed languidly on the rear steps of the busses or on the tops. Most of the bus-loads were singing rollicking choruses. The men were in good spirits. They had been cheered in every village they had passed through on the way from their training area.

"Howdy, bowleg," was the greeting shouted by one of these motoring mockers, who looked down on our saddled steeds, "better get a hustle on them hayburners. We're going to be in Berlin by the time you get where the front used to be."

"Yes, you will," replied one of the mounted artillerymen, with a negative inflection. "You'll get a hell of a long ways without us. If you doughboys start anything without the artillery, you'll see Berlin through the bars of a prisoner's cage."

"Lucky pups—the artillery—nothing to do but ride," was the passing shout of another taunter, perched high on a bus. This was an unanswerable revision of an old taunt that the artillery used to shout to passing infantry in the days when a foot soldier was really a foot soldier. Then the easy-riding mounted troops, when passing an infantry column on the road, would say, "Pretty soft for the doughboys—nothing to do but walk."

"Times certainly have changed," one of our battery drivers felt it necessary to remark to me in defence of his branch of the service. "But there ain't no spark plugs or carburetors to get out of order on our mounts.

"However, we do have our troubles. That runaway wheeler in No. 2 section broke away from the picket line last night and Kemball and I were detailed to hunt all over town for him.

"You know that dark, winding, narrow street, that winds down the hill back of the cathedral. Well, it was about midnight and blacker than the ace of spades, when Kemball and I pushed along there in the dark, looking for that onery animal.

"Suddenly, we heard a sharp clatter on the cobblestones half a block up the hill. It was coming our way full speed. 'Here he comes now,' said Kemball, 'and he's galloping like hell. Jump into a doorway or he'll climb all over us.'

"We waited there pressed against the wall in the dark as the galloping came up to us and passed. What dy'e s'pose it was? It wasn't that runaway horse at all. Just a couple of them French kids chasing one another in wooden shoes."

The road to the front was a populous one. We passed numerous groups of supply wagons carrying food and fodder up to the front lines. Other wagons were returning empty and here and there came an ambulance with bulgy blankets outlining the figures of stretcher cases, piled two high and two wide. Occasionally a Y. M. C. A. runabout loaded down with coffee pots and candy tins and driven by helmeted wearers of the Red Triangle, would pass us carrying its store of extras to the boys up front.

We passed through villages where manufacturing plants were still in operation and, nearer the front, the roads lay through smaller hamlets, shell torn and deserted, save for sentries who stood guard in wooden coops at intersections. Civilians became fewer and fewer, although there was not a village that did not have one or two women or children or old men unfit for uniform.

Finally the road mounted a rolling hill and here it was bordered by roadside screens consisting of stretched chicken wire to which whisps of straw and grass and bits of green dyed cloth had been attached. Our men riding behind the screen peered through apertures in it and saw the distant hills forward, from which German glasses could have observed all passage along that road had it not been for the screen.

So we moved into position. It was late in the night of October 22nd, 1917, that our batteries of artillery and companies of infantry moved through the darkness on the last lap of their trip to the front. The roads were sticky and gummy. A light rain was falling. The guns boomed in front of us, but not with any continued intensity. Through streets paved with slippery cobbles and bordered with the bare skeletons of shell-wrecked houses, our American squads marched four abreast. Their passing in the darkness was accompanied by the sound of the unhastened tread of many hobnailed boots.

At times, the rays of a cautiously flashed electric light would reveal our infantrymen with packs on back and rifles slung over their shoulders. A stiff wind whipped the rain into their faces and tugged the bottoms of their flapping, wet overcoats.

Notwithstanding the fact that they had made it on foot a number of miles from the place where they had disembarked from the motor trucks, the men marched along to the soft singing of songs, which were ordered discontinued as the marching columns got closer to the communicating trenches which led into the front line.

In the march were machine gun carts hauled by American mules and rolling kitchens, which at times dropped on the darkened road swirls of glowing red embers that had to be hurriedly stamped out. Anxious American staff officers consulted their wrist watches frequently in evidence of the concern they felt as to whether the various moving units were reaching designated points upon the scheduled minute.

It was after midnight that our men reached the front line. It was the morning of October 23rd, 1917, that American infantrymen and Bavarian regiments of Landwehr and Landsturm faced one another for the first time in front line positions on the European front.

Less than eight hundred yards of slate and drab-coloured soft ground, blotched with rust-red expanses of wire entanglements, separated the hostile lines.

There was no moon. A few cloud-veiled stars only seemed to accentuate the blackness of the night. There, in the darkness and the mud, on the slippery firing step of trench walls and in damp, foul-smelling dugouts, young red-blooded Americans tingled for the first time with the thrill that they had trained so long and travelled so far to experience.

Through unfortunate management of the Press arrangements in connection with this great historical event, American correspondents accredited by the War Department to our forces, were prevented from accompanying our men into the front that night. Good fortune, however, favoured me as one of the two sole exceptions to this circumstance. Raymond G. Carroll, correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and myself, representing the Chicago Tribune and its associated papers, were the only two newspaper men who went into the line with the men that night. For enjoying this unusual opportunity, we were both arrested several days later, not, however, until after we had obtained the first-hand story of the great event.

A mean drizzle of rain was falling that night, but it felt cool on the pink American cheeks that were hot with excitement. The very wetness of the air impregnated all it touched with the momentousness of the hour. Spirits were high and the mud was deep, but we who were there had the feeling that history was chiselling that night's date into her book of ages.

Occasionally a shell wheezed over through the soggy atmosphere, seeming to leave an unseen arc in the darkness above. It would terminate with a sullen thump in some spongy, water-soaked mound behind us. Then an answering missive of steel would whine away into the populated invisibility in front of us.

French comrades, in half English and half French, gushed their congratulations, and shook us by the hand. Some of us were even hugged and kissed on both cheeks. Our men took the places of French platoons that were sent back to rest billets. But other French platoons remained shoulder to shoulder with our men in the front line. The presence of our troops there was in continuation of their training for the purpose of providing a nucleus for the construction of later contingents. Both our infantry and our artillery acted in conjunction with the French infantry and artillery and the sector remained under French command.

Our men were eager to ask questions and the French were ever ready to respond. They first told us about the difference in the sound of shells. Now that one that started with a bark in back of us and whined over our heads is a depart. It is an Allied shell on its way to the Germans. Now, this one, that whines over first and ends with a distant grunt, like a strong wallop on a wet carpet, is an arrivee. It has arrived from Germany. In the dugouts, our men smoked dozens of cigarettes, lighting fresh ones from the half-consumed butts. It is the appetite that comes with the progressive realisation of a long deferred hope. It is the tension that comes from at last arriving at an object and then finding nothing to do, now that you are there. It is the nervousness that nerveless youth suffers in inactivity.

The men sloshed back and forth through the mud along the narrow confines of the trench. The order is against much movement, but immobility is unbearable. Wet slickers rustle against one another in the narrow traverses, and equipment, principally the French and English gas masks, hanging at either hip become entangled in the darkness.

At times a steel helmet falls from some unaccustomed head and, hitting perhaps a projecting rock in the trench wall, gives forth a clang which is followed by curses from its clumsy owner and an admonition of quiet from some young lieutenant.

"Olson, keep your damn fool head down below the top of that trench or you'll get it blown off." The sergeant is talking, and Olson, who brought from Minnesota a keen desire to see No Man's Land even at the risk of his life, is forced to repress the yearning.

"Two men over in B Company just got holes drilled through their beans for doing the same thing," continued the sergeant. "There's nothing you can see out there anyhow. It's all darkness."

Either consciously or unconsciously, the sergeant was lying, for the purpose of saving Olson and others from a fool's fate. There was not a single casualty in any American unit on the line that first night.

"Where is the telephone dugout?" a young lieutenant asked his French colleague. "I want to speak to the battalion commander."

"But you must not speak English over the telephone," replied the Frenchman, "the Germans will hear you with the instruments they use to tap the underground circuit."

"But I was going to use our American code," said the front line novice; "if the Germans tap in they won't be able to figure out what it means."

"Ah, no, my friend," replied the Frenchman, smiling. "They won't know what the message means, but your voice and language will mean to them that Americans are occupying the sector in front of them, and we want to give them that information in another way, n'est ce pas?"

Undoubtedly there was some concern in the German trenches just over the way with regard to what was taking place in our lines. Relief periods are ticklish intervals for the side making them. It is quite possible that some intimation of our presence may have been given.

There was considerable conversation and movement among our men that night. Jimmy found it frequently necessary to call the attention of Johnny to some new thing he had discovered. And of a consequence, much natural, but needless, chattering resulted.

I believe the Germans did become nervous because they made repeated attacks on the enveloping darkness with numbers of star shells. These aerial beauties of night warfare released from their exploding encasements high in the air, hung from white silk parachutes above the American amateurs.

The numerous company and battery jesters did not refrain from imitative expressions of "Ahs" and "Ohs" and "Ain't it bootiful?" as their laughing upturned faces were illuminated in the white light.

That night one rocket went up shortly before morning. It had a different effect from its predecessors. It reared itself from the darkness somewhere on the left. Its flight was noiseless as it mounted higher and higher on its fiery staff. Then it burst in a shower of green balls of fire.

That meant business. One green rocket was the signal that the Germans were sending over gas shells. It was an alarm that meant the donning of gas masks. On they went quickly. It was the first time this equipment had been adjusted under emergency conditions, yet the men appeared to have mastered the contrivances.

Then the word was passed along the trenches and through the dugouts for the removal of the masks. It had not been a French signal. The green rocket had been sent up by the Germans. The enemy was using green rockets that night as a signal of their own. There had been no gas shells. It was a false alarm.

"The best kind of practice in the world," said one of our battalion commanders; "it's just the stuff we're here for. I hope the Germans happen to do that every night a new bunch of our men get in these trenches."

While the infantry were experiencing these initial thrills in the front line, our gunners were struggling in the mud of the black gun pits to get their pieces into position in the quickest possible time, and achieve the honour of firing that first American shot in the war.

Each battery worked feverishly in intense competition with every other battery. Battery A of the 6th Field, to which I had attached myself, lost in the race for the honour. Another battery in the same regiment accomplished the achievement.

That was Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery. I am reproducing, herewith, for what I believe is the first time, the exact firing data on that shot and the officers and men who took part in it.

* * * * *

By almost superhuman work through the entire previous day and night, details of men from Battery C had pulled one cannon by ropes across a muddy, almost impassable, meadow. So anxious were they to get off the first shot that they did not stop for meals.

They managed to drag the piece into an old abandoned French gun pit. The historical position of that gun was one kilometre due east of the town of Bathelemont and three hundred metres northeast of the Bauzemont-Bathelemont road. The position was located two miles from the old international boundary line between France and German-Lorraine. The position was one and one-half kilometres back of the French first line, then occupied by Americans.

The first shot was fired at 6:5:10 A. M., October 23rd, 1917. Those who participated in the firing of the shot were as follows:

Lieutenant F. M. Mitchell, U.S.R., acted as platoon chief. Corporal Robert Braley laid the piece. Sergeant Elward Warthen loaded the piece. Sergeant Frank Grabowski prepared the fuse for cutting. Private Louis Varady prepared the fuse for cutting. Private John J. Wodarczak prepared the fuse for cutting. Corporal Osborne W. De Varila prepared the fuse for cutting. Sergeant Lonnie Domonick cut the fuse. Captain Idus R. McLendon gave the command to fire. Sergeant Alex L. Arch fired first shot.

The missile fired was a 75 millimetre or 3-inch high-explosive shell. The target was a German battery of 150 millimetre or 6-inch guns located two kilometres back of the German first line trenches, and one kilometre in back of the boundary line between France and German-Lorraine. The position of that enemy battery on the map was in a field 100 metres west of the town which the French still call Xanrey, but which the Germans have called Schenris since they took it from France in 1870. Near that spot—and damn near—fell the first American shell fired in the great war.

* * * * *

NOTE: It is peculiar to note that I am writing this chapter at Atlantic City, October 23rd, 1918, just one year to the day after the event. That shot surely started something.



CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST AMERICAN SECTOR

It was in the Luneville sector, described in the preceding chapter, that the first American fighting men faced the Germans on the western front. It was there that the enemy captured its first American prisoners in a small midnight raid; it was there that we captured some prisoners of theirs, and inflicted our first German casualties; it was there that the first American fighting man laid down his life on the western front.

In spite of these facts, however, the occupation of those front line posts in that sector constituted nothing more than a post-graduate course in training under the capable direction of French instructors who advised our officers and men in everything they did.

At the conclusion of the course, which extended over a number of weeks, the American forces engaged in it were withdrawn from the line and retired for a well-earned rest period and for reorganisation purposes in areas back of the line. There they renewed equipment and prepared for the occupation of the first all-American sector on the western front.

That sector was located in Lorraine some distance to the east of the Luneville front. It was north and slightly west of the city of Toul. It was on the east side of the St. Mihiel salient, then occupied by the Germans.

The sector occupied a position in what the French called the Pont-a-Mousson front. Our men were to occupy an eight-mile section of the front line trenches extending from a point west of the town of Flirey, to a point west of the ruins of the town of Seicheprey. The position was not far from the French stronghold of Verdun to the northwest or the German stronghold of Metz to the northeast, and was equidistant from both.

That line changed from French blue to American khaki on the night of January 21st. The sector became American at midnight. I watched the men as they marched into the line. In small squads they proceeded silently up the road toward the north, from which direction a raw wind brought occasional sounds resembling the falling of steel plates on the wooden floor of a long corridor.

A half moon doubly ringed by mist, made the hazy night look grey. At intervals, phantom flashes flushed the sky. The mud of the roadway formed a colourless paste that made marching not unlike skating on a platter of glue.

This was their departure for the front—this particular battalion—the first battalion of the 16th United States Infantry. I knew, and every man in it knew, what was before them.

Each man was in for a long tour of duty in trenches knee-deep with melted snow and mud. Each platoon commander knew the particular portion of that battle-battered bog into which he must lead his men. Each company commander knew the section of shell-punctured, swamp land that was his to hold, and the battalion commander, a veteran American soldier, was well aware of the particular perils of the position which his one thousand or more men were going to occupy in the very jaw-joint of a narrowing salient.

All branches of the United States military forces may take special pride in that first battalion that went into the new American line that night. The commander represented the U. S. Officers Reserve Corps, and the other officers and men were from the reserves, the regulars, West Point, the National Guard and the National Army. Moreover, the organisation comprised men from all parts of the United States as well as men whose parents had come from almost every race and nationality in the world. One company alone possessed such a babble of dialects among its new Americans, that it proudly called itself, the Foreign Legion.

For two days the battalion had rested in the mud of the semi-destroyed village of Ansauville, several miles back of the front. A broad, shallow stream, then at the flood, wound through and over most of the village site. Walking anywhere near the border of the water, one pulled about with him pounds of tenacious, black gumbo. Dogs and hogs, ducks and horses, and men,—all were painted with nature's handiest camouflage.

Where the stream left the gaping ruins of a stone house on the edge of the village, there was a well-kept French graveyard, clinging to the slope of a small hill. Above the ruins of the hamlet, stood the steeple of the old stone church, from which it was customary to ring the alarm when the Germans sent over their shells of poison gas.

Our officers busied themselves with, unfinished supply problems. Such matters as rubber boots for the men, duck boards for the trenches, food for the mules, and ration containers necessary for the conveyance of hot food to the front lines, were not permitted to interfere with the battalion's movements. In war, there is always the alternative of doing without or doing with makeshifts, and that particular battalion commander, after three years of war, was the kind of a soldier who made the best of circumstances no matter how adverse they may have been.

That commander was Major Griffiths. He was an American fighting man. His military record began in the Philippine Insurrection, when, as a sergeant in a Tennessee regiment of National Guard, he was mentioned in orders for conspicuous gallantry. At the suppression of the insurrection, he became a major in the United States Constabulary in the Philippines. He resigned his majority in 1914, entered the Australian forces, and was wounded with them in the bloody landing at Gallipoli. He was invalided to England, where, upon his partial recovery, he was promoted to major in the British forces and was sent to France in command of a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. With them, he received two more wounds, one at the Battle of Ypres, and another during the fighting around Loos.

He was in an English hospital when America entered the war, but he hurried his convalescence and obtained a transfer back to the army of his own country. He hadn't regained as yet the full use of his right hand, his face still retained a hospital pallor, and an X-ray photograph of his body revealed the presence of numerous pieces of shell still lodged there. But on that night of January 21st, he could not conceal the pride that he felt in the honour in having been the one chosen to command the battalion of Americans that was to take over the first American sector in France. Major Griffiths survived those strenuous days on the Pont-a-Mousson front, but he received a fatal wound three months later at the head of his battalion in front of Catigny, in Picardy. He died fighting under his own flag.

Just before daylight failed that wintry day, three poilus walked down the road from the front and into Ansauville. Two of them were helping a third, whose bandaged arm and shoulder explained the mission of the party. As they passed the rolling kitchens where the Americans were receiving their last meal before entering the trenches, there was silence and not even an exchange of greetings or smiles.

This lack of expression only indicated the depth of feeling stirred by the appearance of this wounded French soldier. The incident, although comparatively trivial, seemed to arouse within our men a solemn grimness and a more fervent determination to pay back the enemy in kind. In silence, our men finished that last meal, which consisted of cold corned beef, two slices of dry bread per man, and coffee.

The sight of that one wounded man did not make our boys realise more than they already did, what was in front of them. They had already made a forty mile march over frozen roads up to this place and had incurred discomforts seemingly greater than a shell-shattered arm or a bullet-fractured shoulder. After that gruelling hiking experience, it was a pleasant prospect to look forward to a chance of venting one's feelings on the enemy.

At the same time, no chip-on-the-shoulder cockiness marked the disposition of these men about to take first grips with the Germans,—no challenging bravado was revealed in the actions or statements of these grim, serious trail-blazers of the American front, whose attitude appeared to be one of soldierly resignation to the first martial principle, "Orders is orders."

As the companies lined up in the village street in full marching order, awaiting the command to move, several half-hearted attempts at jocularity died cold. One irrepressible made a futile attempt at frivolity by announcing that he had Cherokee blood in his veins and was so tough he could "spit battleships." This attempted jocularity drew as much mirth as an undertaker's final invitation to the mourners to take the last, long look at the departed.

One bright-faced youngster tingling with the thrill of anticipation, leaped on a gun carriage and absently whistled a shrill medley, beginning with "Yaka-hula," and ending with "Just a Song at Twilight." There was food for thought in the progress of his efforts from the frivolous to the pensive, but there was little time for such thoughts. No one even told him to shut up.

While there was still light, an aerial battle took place overhead. For fifteen minutes, the French anti-aircraft guns banged away at three German planes, which were audaciously sailing over our lines. The Americans rooted like bleacherites for the guns but the home team failed to score, and the Germans sailed serenely home. They apparently had had time to make adequate observations.

During the entire afternoon, German sausage balloons had hung high in the air back of the hostile line, offering additional advantages for enemy observation. On the highroad leading from Ansauville, a conspicuous sign L'enemie vous voit informed newcomers that German eyes were watching their movements and could interfere at any time with a long range shell. The fact was that the Germans held high ground and their glasses could command almost all of the terrain back of our lines.

Under this seemingly eternal espionage punctuated at intervals by heavy shelling, several old women of the village had remained in their homes, living above the ground on quiet days and moving their knitting to the front yard dugout at times when gas and shell and bomb interfered. Some of these women operated small shops in the front rooms of their damaged homes and the Americans lined up in front of the window counters and exchanged dirty French paper money for canned pate de foi gras or jars of mustard.

A machine gun company with mule-drawn carts led the movement from Ansauville into the front. It was followed at fifty yard intervals by other sections. Progress down that road was executed in small groups—it was better to lose one whole section than an entire company.

That highroad to the front, with its border of shell-withered trees, was revealed that night against a bluish grey horizon occasionally rimmed with red. Against the sky, the moving groups were defined as impersonal black blocks. Young lieutenants marched ahead of each platoon. In the hazy light, it was difficult to distinguish them. The only difference was that their hips seemed bulkier from the heavy sacks, field glasses, map cases, canteens, pistol holsters and cartridge clips.

Each section, as it marched out of the village, passed under the eye of Major Griffiths, who sat on his horse in the black shadow of a wall. A sergeant commanding one section was coming toward him.

"Halt!" ordered the Major. "Sergeant, where is your helmet?"

"One of the men in my section is wearing it, sir," replied the Sergeant.

"Why?" snapped the Major.

"Somebody took his and he hadn't any," said the Sergeant, "so I made him wear mine, sir."

"Get it back and wear it yourself," the Major ordered. "Nothing could hurt the head of a man who couldn't hang on to his own helmet."

The order was obeyed, the section marched on and a bareheaded Irishman out of hearing of the Major said, "I told the Sergeant not to make me wear it; I don't need the damn thing."

Another section passed forward, the moonlight gleaming on the helmets jauntily cocked over one ear and casting black shadows over the faces of the wearers. From these shadows glowed red dots of fire.

"Drop those cigarettes," came the command from the all watchful, unseen presence mounted on the horse in the shadow of the wall. Automatically, the section spouted red arcs that fell to the road on either side in a shower of sparks.

"It's a damn shame to do that." Major Griffith spoke to me standing beside his horse. "You can't see a cigarette light fifty yards away, but if there were no orders against smoking, the men would be lighting matches or dumping pipes, and such flashes can be seen."

There was need for caution. The enemy was always watchful for an interval when one organisation was relieving another on the line. That period represented the time when an attack could cause the greatest confusion in the ranks of the defenders. But that night our men accomplished the relief of the French Moroccan division then in the line without incident.

* * * * *

Two nights later, in company with a party of correspondents, I paid a midnight visit to our men in the front line trenches of that first American sector. With all lights out, cigarettes tabooed and the siren silenced, our overloaded motor slushed slowly along the shell-pitted roads, carefully skirting groups of marching men and lumbering supply wagons that took shape suddenly out of the mist-laden road in front of us.

Although it was not raining, moisture seemed to drip from everything, and vapours from the ground, mixing with the fog overhead, almost obscured the hard-working moon.

In the greyness of the night sight and smell lost their keenness, and familiar objects assumed unnatural forms, grotesque and indistinct.

From somewhere ahead dull, muffled thumps in the mist brought memories of spring house cleaning and the dusting out of old cushions, but it was really the three-year-old song of the guns. Nature had censored observation by covering the spectacle with the mantle of indefiniteness. Still this was the big thing we had come to see—night work in and behind the front lines of the American sector.

We approached an engineers' dump, where the phantoms of fog gradually materialised into helmeted khaki figures that moved in mud knee-deep and carried boxes and planks and bundles of tools. Total silence covered all the activity and not a ray of light revealed what mysteries had been worked here in surroundings that seemed no part of this world.

An irregular pile of rock loomed grey and sinister before us, and, looking upward, we judged, from its gaping walls, that it was the remains of a church steeple. It was the dominating ruin in the town of Beaumont.

"Turn here to the left," the officer conducting our party whispered into the ear of the driver.

The sudden execution of the command caused the officer's helmet to rasp against that of the driver with a sound that set the cautious whispering to naught.

"Park here in the shadow," he continued. "Make no noise; show no light. They dropped shells here ten minutes ago. Gentlemen, this is regimental headquarters. Follow me."

In a well buttressed cellar, surmounted by a pile of ruins, we found the colonel sitting at a wooden table in front of a grandfather's clock of scratched mahogany. He called the roll—five special correspondents, Captain Chandler, American press officer, with a goatee and fur coat to match; Captain Vielcastel, a French press officer, who is a marquis and speaks English, and a lieutenant from brigade headquarters, who already had been named "Whispering Willie."

The colonel offered sticks to those with the cane habit. With two runners in the lead, we started down what had been the main street of the ruined village.

"I can't understand the dropping of that shell over here to-night," the colonel said. "When we relieved the French, there had been a long-standing agreement against such discourtesy. It's hard to believe the Boche would make a scrap of paper out of that agreement. They must have had a new gunner on the piece. We sent back two shells into their regimental headquarters. They have been quiet since."

Ten minutes' walk through the mud, and the colonel stopped to announce: "Within a hundred yards of you, a number of men are working. Can you hear 'em?"

No one could, so he showed us a long line of sweating Americans stretching off somewhere into the fog. Their job was more of the endless trench digging and improving behind the lines. While one party swung pick and spade in the trenches, relief parties slept on the ground nearby. The colonel explained that these parties arrived after dark, worked all night, and then carefully camouflaged all evidences of new earth and departed before daylight, leaving no trace of their night's work to be discovered by prying airman. Often the work was carried on under an intermittent shelling, but that night only two shells had landed near them.

An American-manned field gun shattered the silence, so close to us that we could feel its breath and had a greater respect for its bite. The proximity of the gun had not even been guessed by any of our party. A yellow stab of flame seemed to burn the mist through which the shell screeched on its way toward Germany.

Correspondent Junius Woods, who was wearing an oversized pair of hip rubber boots, immediately strapped the tops to his belt.

"I am taking no chance," he said; "I almost jumped out of them that time. They ought to send men out with a red flag before they pull off a blast like that."

The colonel then left us and with the whispering lieutenant and runners in advance, we continued toward the front.

"Walk in parties of two," was the order of the soft-toned subaltern. "Each party keep ten yards apart. Don't smoke. Don't talk. This road is reached by their field pieces. They also cover it with indirect machine gun fire. They sniped the brigade commander right along here this morning. He had to get down into the mud. I can afford to lose some of you, but not the entire party. If anything comes over, you are to jump into the communicating trenches on the right side of the road."

His instructions were obeyed and it was almost with relief that, ten minutes later, we followed him down the slippery side of the muddy bank and landed in front of a dugout.

In the long, narrow, low-ceilinged shelter which completely tunnelled the road at a depth of twenty feet, two twenty-year-old Americans were hugging a brazier filled with charcoal. In this dugout was housed a group from a machine gun battalion, some of whose members were snoring in a double tier of bunks on the side.

Deep trenches at the other end of the dugout led to the gun pits, where this new arm of the service operated at ranges of two miles. These special squads fired over the heads of those in front of them or over the contours of the ground and put down a leaden barrage on the front line of the Germans. The firing not only was indirect but was without correction from the rectifying observation, of which the artillery had the benefit by watching the burst of their missiles.

Regaining the road, we walked on through the ruins on the edge of the village of Seicheprey, where our way led through a drunken colony of leaning walls and brick piles.

Here was the battalion headquarters, located underneath the old stones of a barn which was topped by the barest skeleton of a roof. What had been the first floor of the structure had been weighted down heavily with railroad iron and concrete to form the roof of the commander's dugout. The sides of the decrepit structure bulged outward and were prevented from bursting by timber props radiating on all sides like the legs of a centipede. A mule team stood in front of the dugout.

"What's that?" the whispering lieutenant inquired in hushed tones from a soldier in the road, as he pointed over the mules to the battalion headquarters.

"What's what?" the soldier replied without respect.

The obscurity of night is a great reducer of ranks. In the mist officer and man look alike.

"Why, that?" repeated "Whispering Willie" in lower, but angrier tones. "What's that there?" he reiterated, pointing at the mules.

"Can't you see it's mules?" replied the man in an immoderate tone of voice, betraying annoyance.

We were spared what followed. The lieutenant undoubtedly confirmed his rank, and the man undoubtedly proffered unto him the respect withheld by mistake. When "Whispering Willie" joined us several minutes later in the dugout, his helmet rode on the back of his head, but his dignity was on straight.

The Battalion Commander, Major Griffith, was so glad to see us that he sent for another bottle of the murky grey water that came from a well on one side of a well populated graveyard not fifty yards from his post.

"A good night," he said; "haven't seen it so quiet in three years. We have inter-battalion relief on. Some new companies are taking over the lines. Some of them are new to the front trenches and I'm going out with you and put them up on their toes. Wait till I report in."

He rang the field telephone on the wall and waited for an answer. An oil lamp hung from a low ceiling over the map table. In the hot, smoky air we quietly held our places while the connection was made.

"Hello," the Major said, "operator, connect me with Milwaukee." Another wait——

"Hello, Milwaukee, this is Larson. I'm talking from Hamburg. I'm leaving this post with a deck of cards and a runner. If you want me you can get me at Coney Island or Hinky Dink's. Wurtzburger will sit in here."

"Some code, Major," Lincoln Eyre, correspondent, said. "What does a pack of cards indicate?"



"Why, anybody who comes out here when he doesn't have to is a funny card," the Major replied, "and it looks as if I have a pack of them to-night. Fritz gets quite a few things that go over our wires and we get lots of his. All are tapped by induction.

"Sometimes the stuff we get is important and sometimes it isn't. Our wire tapping report last night carried a passage something like this:—The German operator at one post speaking to the operator at another said:

"'Hello, Herman, where did that last shell drop?'

"Second operator replied, 'It killed two men in a ration party in a communicating trench and spilt all the soup. No hot food for you to-night, Rudolph.'

"Herman replying: 'That's all right. We have got some beer here.'

"Then there was a confusion of sounds and a German was heard talking to some one in his dugout. He said:

"'Hurry, here comes the lieutenant! Hide the can!'

"That's the way it goes," added the Major, "but if we heard that the society editor of the Fliegende Blaetter and half a dozen pencil strafers were touring the German front line, we'd send 'em over something that would start 'em humming a hymn of hate. If they knew I was joy riding a party of correspondents around the diggin's to-night, they might give you something to write about and cost me a platoon or two. You're not worth it. Come on."

Our party now numbered nine and we pushed off, stumbling through uneven lanes in the centre of dimly lit ruins. According to orders, we carried gas masks in a handy position.

This sector had a nasty reputation when it comes to that sample of Teutonic culture. Fritz's poison shells dropped almost noiselessly and, without a report, broke open, liberating to enormous expansion the inclosed gases. These spread in all directions, and, owing to the lowness and dampness of the terrain, the poison clouds were imperceptible both to sight or smell. They clung close to the ground to claim unsuspecting victims.

"How are we to know if we are breathing gas or not?" asked the Philadelphia correspondent, Mr. Henri Bazin.

"That's just what you DON'T know," replied the Major.

"Then when will we know it is time to adjust our masks?" Bazin persisted.

"When you see some one fall who has breathed it," the Major said.

"But suppose we breathe it first?"

"Then you won't need a mask," the Major replied, "You see, it's quite simple."

"Halt!" The sharp command, coming sternly but not too loud from somewhere in the adjacent mist, brought the party to a standstill in the open on the edge of the village. We remained notionless while the Major advanced upon command from the unseen. He rejoined us in several minutes with the remark that the challenge had come from one of his old men, and he only hoped the new companies taking over the line that night were as much on their jobs.

"Relief night always is trying," the Major explained. "Fritz always likes to jump the newcomers before they get the lay of the land. He tried it on the last relief, but we burnt him."

While talking the Major was leading the way through the first trench I had ever seen above the surface of the ground. The bottom of the trench was not only on a level with the surrounding terrain, but in some places it was even higher. Its walls, which rose almost to the height of a man's head, were made of large wicker woven cylinders filled with earth and stones.

Our guide informed us that the land which we were traversing was so low that any trench dug in the ground would simply be a ditch brimful of undrainable water, so that, inasmuch as this position was in the first line system, walls had been built on either side of the path to protect passers-by from shell fragments and indirect machine gun fire. We observed one large break where a shell had entered during the evening.

Farther on, this communicating passage, which was more corridor than trench, reached higher ground and descended into the earth. We reeled through its zig-zag course, staggering from one slanting corner to another.

The sides were fairly well retained by French wicker work, but every eighth or tenth duck board was missing, making it necessary for trench travellers to step knee-deep in cold water or to jump the gap. Correspondent Eyre, who was wearing shoes and puttees, abhorred these breaks.

We passed the Major's post of command, which he used during intense action, and some distance on, entered the front line. With the Major leading, we walked up to a place where two Americans were standing on a firing step with their rifles extended across the parapet. They were silently peering into the grey mist over No Man's Land. One of them looked around as we approached. Apparently he recognised the Major's cane as a symbol of rank. He came to attention.

"Well," the Major said, "is this the way you let us walk up on you? Why don't you challenge me?"

"I saw you was an officer, sir," the man replied.

"Now, you are absolutely sure I am YOUR officer?" the Major said slowly and coldly, with emphasis on the word "your." "Suppose I tell you I am a German officer and these men behind me are Germans. How do you know?"

With a quick movement the American brought his rifle forward to the challenge, his right hand slapping the wooden butt with an audible whack.

"Advance one, and give the countersign," he said with a changed voice and manner and the Major, moving to within whispering distance, breathed the word over the man's extended bayonet. Upon hearing it, the soldier lowered his gun and stood at attention.

It was difficult to figure whether his relief over the scare was greater than his fears of the censure he knew was coming.

"Next time anybody gets that close to you without being challenged," the Major said, "don't be surprised if it is a German. That's the way they do it. They don't march in singing 'Deutschland Ueber Alles.'

"If you see them first, you might live through the war. If they see you first, we will have wasted a lot of Liberty bonds and effort trying to make a soldier out of you. Now, remember, watch yourself."

We pushed on encountering longer patches of trench where duck boards were entirely missing and where the wading sometimes was knee-deep. In some places, either the pounding of shells or the thawing out of the ground had pushed in the revetments, appreciably narrowing the way and making progress more difficult. Arriving at an unmanned firing step large enough to accommodate the party, we mounted and took a first look over the top.

Moonlight now was stronger through the mist which hung fold over fold over the forbidden land between the opposing battle lines. At intervals nervous machine guns chattered their ghoulish gibberish or tut-tut-ted away chidingly like finicky spinsters. Their intermittent sputtering to the right and left of us was unenlightening. We couldn't tell whether they were speaking German or English. Occasional bullets whining somewhere through that wet air gave forth sounds resembling the ripping of linen sheets.

Artillery fire was the exception during the entire night but when a shell did trace its unseen arc through the mist mantle, its echoes gave it the sound of a street car grinding through an under-river tunnel or the tube reverberations of a departing subway train.

We were two hundred yards from the German front lines. Between their trenches and ours, at this point, was low land, so boggy as to be almost impassable. The opposing lines hugged the tops of two small ridges.

Fifty yards in front was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without a remark from us.

The Major appeared to be itching for action and he got into official swing a hundred yards farther on, where a turn in the trench revealed to us the muffled figures of two young Americans, comfortably seated on grenade boxes on the firing step.

From their easy positions they could look over the top and watch all approaches without rising. Each one had a blanket wrapped about his legs and feet. They looked the picture of ease. Without moving, one, with his rifle across his lap, challenged the Major, advanced him, and received the countersign. We followed the Major in time to hear his first remark:

"Didn't they get the rocking chairs out here yet?" he said with the provoked air that customarily accompanies any condemnation of the quartermaster department.

"No, sir," replied the seated sentry. "They didn't get here. The men we relieved said that they never got anything out here."

"Nor the footstools?" the Major continued, this time with an unmistakable tone.

The man didn't answer.

"Do you two think you are taking moon baths on the Riviera?" the Major asked sternly. "You are less than two hundred yards from the Germans. You are all wrapped up like Egyptian mummies. Somebody could lean over the top and snake off your head with a trench knife before you could get your feet loose. Take those blankets off your feet and stand up."

The men arose with alacrity, shedding the blankets and removing the grenade box chairs. The Major continued:

"You know you are not sitting in a club window in Fifth Avenue and watching the girls go by. You're not looking for chickens out there. There's a hawk over there and sometimes he carries off precious little lambs. Now, the next time anybody steps around the corner of that trench, you be on your feet with your bayonet and gun ready to mix things."

The lambs saluted as the Major moved off with a train of followers who, by this time, were beginning to feel that these trenches held other lambs, only they carried notebooks instead of cartridge belts.

Stopping in front of a dugout, the Major gathered us about to hear the conversation that was going on within. Through the cracks of the door, we looked down a flight of steep stairs, dug deep into this battlefield graveyard. There were lights in the chamber below and the sound of voices came up to us. One voice was singing softly.

"Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears, The infantry, the infantry, they don't get any beers, The cavalry, the artillery, and the lousy engineers, They couldn't lick the infantry in a hundred million years."

"I got a brother in the artillery," came another voice, "but I am ready to disown him. They talk a lot about this counter battery work, but it's all bunk. A battery in position has nice deep dugouts and hot chow all the time. They gets up about 9 o'clock in the morning and shaves up all nice for the day.

"'Bout 10 o'clock the captain says, 'I guess we will drop a few shells on that German battery on the other side of the hill.' So they pops off forty or fifty rounds in that general direction and don't hit anything 'cause the German battery immediately roots down into its nice, deep dugouts. As soon as our battery lays off and gets back into its holes, the German battery comes out and pops back forty or fifty at 'em and, of course, don't hurt them neither.

"Then it is time for lunch, and while both of these here batteries is eating, they get so sore about not having hit each other during the morning, that they just call off counter battery work for the day and turn their guns on the front lines and blow hell out of the infantry. I haven't got any use for an artilleryman. I'm beginning to think all of them Germans and Allies are alike and has an agreement against the doughboys."

The Major interrupted by rapping sharply on the door.

"Come in," was the polite and innocent invitation guilelessly spoken from below. The Major had his helmet on, so he couldn't tear his hair.

"Come up here, you idiots, every one of you."

The Major directed his voice down into the hole in an unmistakable and official tone. There was a scurrying of feet and four men emerged carrying their guns. They were lined up against the trench wall.

"At midnight," the Major began, "in your dugout in the front line forty yards from the Germans, with no sentry at the door, you hear a knock on the door and you shout, 'Come in.' I commend your politeness, and I know that's what your mothers taught you to say when visitors come, but this isn't any tea fight out here. One German could have wiggled over the top here and stood in this doorway and captured all four of you single-handed, or he could have rolled a couple of bombs down that hole and blown all of you to smithereens. What's your aim in life—hard labour in a German prison camp or a nice little wooden cross out here four thousand miles from Punkinville? Why wasn't there any sentry at that door?"

The question remained unanswered but the incident had its effect on the quartet. Without orders, all four decided to spend the remainder of the night on the firing step with their eyes glued on the enemy's line. They simply hadn't realised they were really in the war. The Major knew this, but made a mental reservation of which the commander of this special platoon got full benefit before the night was over.

The front line from here onward followed a small ridge running generally east and west, but now bearing slightly to the northward. We were told the German line ran in the same general direction, but at this point bore to the southward.

The opposing lines in the direction of our course were converging and we were approaching the place where they were the closest in the sector. If German listening posts heard the progress of our party through the line, only a telephone call back to the artillery was necessary to plant a shell among us, as every point on the system was registered.

As we silently considered various eventualities immaterial to the prosecution of the war but not without personal concern, our progress was brought to a sudden standstill.

"Huh-huh-halt!" came a drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for a thrust.