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If a German battery began shelling one of our battery positions, the artillerymen in that position were not called upon to stand by their guns and return the fire. The order would be given to temporarily abandon the position and the men would be withdrawn a safe distance. The German battery that was firing would be responded to, two to one, by other American batteries located nearby and which did not happen to be under fire at the time. By this system we conserved our strength.

Our infantry was strong in their praise of the artillery. I observed this particularly one day on the Toul front when General Pershing dropped in unexpectedly at the division headquarters, then located in the hillside village of Bourcq. While the commander and his party were awaiting a meal which was being prepared, four muddy figures tramped down the hallway of the Château. Through the doorway the general observed their entrance.

The two leading figures were stolid German soldiers, prisoners of war, and behind them marched their captors, two excusably proud young Americans. One of them carried his bayoneted rifle at the ready, while the second carried the equipment which had been taken from the prisoners. The American commander ordered the group brought before him and asked one of the Americans to relate the story of the capture.

"We in the infantry got 'em, sir," replied one, "but the artillery deserved most of the credit. It happened just at dawn this morning. Jim here, and myself, were holding down an advance machine gun post when the Germans laid down a flock of shells on our first line trench. We just kept at the gun ready to let them have it if they started to come over.

"Pretty soon we saw them coming through the mist and we began to put it to 'em. I think we got a bunch of them but they kept on coming.

"Then somebody back in our first line shot up the signal for a barrage in our sector. It couldn't have been a minute before our cannon cut loose and the shells began to drop right down in the middle of the raiding party.

"It was a good heavy barrage, sir, and it cut clean through the centre of the raiders. Two Germans were ahead of the rest and the barrage landed right in back of them. The rest started running back toward their lines, but the first pair could not go back because they would have had to pass through the barrage. I kept the machine gun going all the time and Jim showed himself above the trench and pointed his rifle at the cut-off pair.

"They put up their hands right quick and we waved to 'em to come in. They took it on the jump and landed in our trench as fast as they could. We took their equipment off them and we were ordered to march them back here to headquarters. That's all there was to it, sir."

The enemy in front of Toul manifested an inordinate anxiety to know more about the strength of our forces and the character of the positions we occupied. A captured German document issued to the Fifth Bavarian Landwehr infantry brigade instructed every observer and patrol to do his or its best "to bring information about the new enemy."

"Nothing is known as yet about the methods of fighting or leadership," the document set forth, "and all information possible must be gathered as to particular features of American fighting and outpost tactics. This will then be used for extending the information bulletin. Any observation or identification, however insignificant, may be of the greatest value."

The document directed that data on the following questions be obtained:

"Are sentry posts sentry posts or stronger posts? Further advanced reconnoitring patrols? Manner of challenging? Behaviour on post during day and night? Vigilance? Ambush tactics and cunning?

"Do they shoot and signal on every occasion? Do the posts hold their ground on the approach of a patrol, or do they fall back?

"Are the Americans careful and cautious? Are they noisy? What is their behaviour during smoke screens?"

The enemy's keen desire to acquire this information was displayed in the desperate efforts it made. One day the French troops occupying the trenches on the right flank of the American sector, encountered a soldier in an American uniform walking through their positions.

He was stopped and questioned. He said he had been one of an American patrol that had gone out the night before, that he had lost his way in No Man's Land and that he thought he was returning to his own trenches, when he dropped into those held by the French.

Although the man wore our uniform and spoke excellent English and seemed straightforward in his replies, as to his name and rank and organisation, the French officer before whom he was brought was not completely satisfied. To overcome this hesitancy, the suspected man opened his shirt and produced an American identification tag verifying his answers.

The French officer, still suspicious, ordered the man held while he telephoned to the American organisation mentioned to ascertain whether any man of the name given was missing from that unit.

"Yes," replied the American captain. "We lost him last October, when we were in the front line down in the Luneville sector. He was captured with eight others by the Germans."

"Well, we've got him over here on your right flank. He came into our lines this morning – " the French officer started to say.

"Bully," came the American interruption over the wire. "He's escaped from the Germans and has come clear through their lines to get back to his company. He'll get a D. S. C. for that. We'll send right over for him."

"But when we questioned him," replied the Frenchman, "he said he left your lines only last night on patrol and got lost in No Man's Land."

"I'll come right over and look at that party, myself," the American captain hastily replied.

He reached the French officer's dugout several hours later and the suspect was ordered brought in.

"He must be crazy, sir," the French orderly said. "He tried to kill himself a few minutes ago and we have had to hold him."

The man was brought into the dugout between two poilus who held his arms. The American captain took a careful look and said:

"That's not our man. He wears our uniform correctly and that's our regulation identification tag. Both of them must have been taken away from our man when he was captured. This man is an impostor."

"He's more than that," replied the Frenchman with a smile. "He's a German spy."

The prisoner made no reply, but later made a full confession of his act, and also gave to his interrogators much valuable information, which, however, did not save him from paying the penalty in front of a firing squad. When he faced the rifles, he was not wearing the stolen uniform.

CHAPTER X
INTO PICARDY TO MEET THE GERMAN PUSH

Toward the end of March, 1918, just at the time when the American Expeditionary Forces were approaching the desired degree of military effectiveness, the fate of civilisation was suddenly imperilled by the materialisation of the long expected German offensive.

This push, the greatest the enemy had ever attempted, began on March 21st, and the place that Hindenburg selected for the drive was Picardy, the valley of the Somme, the ancient cockpit of Europe. On that day the German hordes, scores upon scores of divisions, hurled themselves against the British line between Arras and Noyon.

Before that tremendous weight of manpower, the Allied line was forced to give and one of the holding British armies, the Fifth, gave ground on the right flank, and with its left as a hinge, swung back like a gate, opening the way for the Germans toward Paris.

There have been many descriptions of the fierce fighting put up by the French and British to stem the German advance, but the most interesting one that ever came to my notice, came from one of the few American soldiers that participated in the defence. Two weeks after the opening of the battle and at a time when the German advance had been stopped, I came upon this American in a United States Military Hospital at Dijon.

An interne led me to the bedside of Jimmy Brady, a former jockey from the Pimlico turf in Baltimore, and now a proud wearer of Uncle Sam's khaki. In his own quaint way, Jimmy told me the story of what a little handful of Americans did in the great battle in Picardy. Jimmy knew. Jimmy had been there.

"Lad," he said, "I'm telling you it was a real jam. I learned one hell of a headful in the last ten days that I'll not be forgetting in the next ten years. I've got new ideas about how long this war is goin' to last. Of course, we're going to lick the Boches before it ends, but I've sorter given up the picture I had of myself marching up Fifth Avenue in a victory parade on this coming Fourth of July. I'll say it can't be done in that time.

"Our outfit from old – engineers, and believe me there's none better, have been working up in the Somme country for the last two months. We were billeted at Brie and most of our work had been throwing bridges across the Canal du Nord about three miles south of Peronne. I'm telling you the Somme ain't a river. It's a swamp, and they just hardly squeeze enough water outer it to make a canal which takes the place of a river.

"We was working under the British. Their old bridges over the canal were wooden affairs and most of them had signs on them reading, 'This bridge won't hold a tank,' and that bridge wouldn't bear trotting horses, and so on. Some of 'em we tore down must have been put in for scenery purposes only. We were slamming up some husky looking steel structures like you see in the States, and believe me it makes me sick to think that we had to blow 'em all up again before the Boches got to 'em.

"I see by the papers that the battle began on the 21st, but I've got no more idea about the date of it than the King of Honolulu. They say it's been on only about ten days, but I couldn't swear it hadn't been on since New Year's Eve. It sure seemed a long time. As I told you, we were working just south of Peronne on the main road between St. Quentin and Amiens. She started on a foggy morning and for two days the music kept getting closer. On the first day, all traffic was frontward, men, guns, and camions going up towards the lines, and then the tide began to flow back.

"Ambulances and camions, full of poor wounded devils, filled the road, and then came labour battalions of chattering Chinks, Egyptians, and Fiji Islanders and God knows what. None of these birds were lingering, because the enemy was sprinkling the roads with shells and sorter keeping their marching spirits up. Orders came for us to ditch our packs and equipment all except spades, rifles, belts and canteens, and we set off toward the rear.

"Do you mind your map of the Somme? Well, we pulls up at Chaulnes for a breath. It was a big depot and dump town – aeroplanes and everything piled up in it. We were ordered onto demolition work, being as we was still classed as non-combatants. I don't know how many billions of dollars' worth of stuff we blew up and destroyed, but it seemed to me there was no end of it. Fritz kept coming all the time and they hiked us on to Aubercourt and then to Dormant, and each place we stopped and dug trenches, and then they shoots us into camions and rushes us north to a town not far out of Amiens.

"With about forty men, we marched down the road, this time as non-combatants no longer. We stopped just east of the village of Marcelcave and dug a line of trenches across the road. We had twenty machine guns and almost as many different kinds of ammunition as there was different nationalities in our trench. Our position was the fifth line of defence, we was told, but the guns kept getting closer and a lot of that long range stuff was giving us hell. Near me there was a squad of my men, one Chink, three Canadians, and we two Dublin fusileers.

"Then we begin to see our own guns, that is, British guns, beginning to blow hell out of this here village of Marcelcave right in front of us. It made me wild to see the artillery making a mistake like that, so I says to one of these here Dublin fusileers:

"'Whatinell's 'matter wid dose guns firing on our own men up there in the village? If this is the fifth line, then that must be our fourth line in the village?'

"'Lad,' says the Dublin fusileer to me, 'I don't want to discourage you for the life of me, but this only used to be the fifth line. We are in the first line now and it's up to you and me and the Chink and the rest of us to keep the Fritzes out of Amiens. At this moment we are all that's between.'

"We started to the machine guns and began pouring it in on 'em. The minute some of 'em would start out of the town we would wither them. Holy mother, but what a beautiful murder it was!

"I didn't know then, and don't know yet, what has become of all the rest of our officers and men, but I sorter felt like every shot I sent over was paying 'em back for some of their dirty work. We kept handing it to 'em hot. You oughter seen that Chink talking Mongolian to a machine gun, and, believe me, he sure made it understand him. I'm here to say that when a Chink fights, he's a fighting son-of-a-gun and don't let anybody kid you different.

"Well, our little mob held 'em off till dark and then British Tommies piled in and relieved us. We needed it because we hadn't had a bite in seventy hours and I had been lying in the mud and water for twice that time. Just before relief comes on, two skulking figures comes over the top. I was thinking that maybe these was Hindus or Eskimos coming to join our little international party and we shouts out to 'em and asks 'em where they hails from. Both of 'em yelled back, 'Kamerad,' and then I knew that we'd not only held the fort, but had captured two prisoners even if they was deserters.

"I marched 'em back that night to the next town and took 'em into a grocery store, where there was a lot of Tommies helping themselves to the first meal in days. While we were eating bread and cheese and sardines and also feeding me two prisoners, we talks to them and finds out that, as far as they are concerned, the Kaiser will never get their vote again.

"One Tommy says to one of my prisoners: 'Kaiser no good – pas bon, ain't it?' and the prisoner said, 'Yah,' and I shoved my elbow into his ribs and right quick he said, 'Nein.' Then the Tommy said: 'Hindenburg dirty rotter, nacy pa?' and the Fritz said, 'Yah. Nein,' and then looked at me and said 'Yah' again. They was not bad prisoners and I marched 'em twenty miles that night, just the three of us – two of them in front and me in back with the rifle over me arm.

"And the joke of it was that both of them could have taken the gun and killed me any minute for all I could have done."

"How do you figure that, Corporal?" I asked.

For reply, Jimmy Brady drew from beneath the blankets a pair of knotted hands with fingers and thumbs stiffened and bent in and obviously impossible to use on a trigger. Brady is not in the hospital for wounds. Four days and nights in water and mud in the battle of battles had twisted and shrunken him with rheumatism. But he is one rheumatic who helped to save Amiens.

Upon the heels of the German successes in Picardy, developments followed fast. Principal among these, was the materialisation of a unified command of all the armies of the Allies. General Ferdinand Foch was selected and placed in supreme command of every fighting man under the Allied flags.

One of the events that led up to this long delayed action, was the unprecedented action of General Pershing, when he turned over the command of all the American forces in France to General Foch. He did this with the words:

"I come to say to you that the American people would hold it a great honour for our troops were they engaged in the present battle. I ask it of you in my name and in that of the American people.

"There is at this moment no other question than that of fighting. Infantry, artillery, aviation – all that we have are yours to dispose of as you will. Others are coming which are as numerous as will be necessary. I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history."

The action met with the unqualified endorsement of every officer and man in the American forces. From that minute on, the American slogan in France was "Let's go," and every regiment began to hope that it would be among the American organisations selected to do battle with the German in Picardy. Secretary of War Baker, then in France, expressed his pleasure over General Pershing's unselfish offer with the following public statement on Mar. 30th:

"I am delighted with the prompt and effective action of General Pershing in placing all American troops at the disposal of the Allies in the present situation. His action will meet with hearty approval in the United States, where the people desire their Expeditionary Force to be of the utmost service to the common cause.

"I have visited practically all the American troops in France, some of them quite recently, and had an opportunity to observe the enthusiasm with which the officers and men receive the announcement that they may be used in the present conflict. Regiments to which the announcement was made, broke spontaneously into cheers."

Particularly were there cheers when the news spread through the ranks of the First United States division, then on duty on the line in front of Toul, that it had been the first American division chosen to go into Picardy. I was fortunate enough to make arrangements to go with them.

I rode out from old positions with the guns and boarded the troop train which took our battery by devious routes to changes of scenery, gratifying both to vision and spirit. We lived in our cars on tinned meat and hard bread, washed down with swallows of vin ordinaire, hurriedly purchased at station buvettes. The horses rode well.

Officers and men, none of us cared for train schedule simply because none of us knew where we were going, and little time was wasted in conjecture. Soldierly curiosity was satisfied with the knowledge that we were on our way, and with this satisfaction, the hours passed easily. In fact, the blackjack game in the officers' compartment had reached the point where the battery commander had garnered almost all of the French paper money in sight, when our train passed slowly through the environs of Paris.

Other American troop trains had preceded us, because where the railroad embankment ran close and parallel to the street of some nameless Faubourg, our appearance was met with cheers and cries from a welcoming regiment of Paris street gamins, who trotted in the street beside the slow moving troop train and shouted and threw their hats and wooden shoes in the air. Sous and fifty centime pieces and franc pieces showered from the side doors of the horses' cars as American soldiers, with typical disregard for the value of money, pitched coin after coin to the scrambling mob of children. At least a hundred francs must have been cast out upon those happy, romping waves of childish faces and up-stretched dirty hands.

"A soldier would give his shirt away," said a platoon commander, leaning out of the window and watching the spectacle, and surreptitiously pitching a few coins himself. "Hope we get out of this place before the men pitch out a gun or a horse to that bunch. Happy little devils, aren't they? It's great to think we are on our way up to meet their daddies."

Unnumbered hours more passed merrily in the troop train before we were shunted into the siding of a little town. Work of unloading was started and completed within an hour. Guns and wagons were unloaded on the quay, while the animals were removed from the cars on movable runways or ramps. As each gun or wagon reached the ground, its drivers hitched in the horses and moved it away. Five minutes later we rode out of the yards and down the main street of the town.

Broad steel tires on the carriages of the heavies bumped and rumbled over the clean cobbles and the horses pranced spryly to get the kinks out of their legs, long fatigued from vibrations of the train. Women, old and young, lined the curbs, smiling and throwing kisses, waving handkerchiefs and aprons and begging for souvenirs. If every request for a button had been complied with, our battery would have reached the front with a shocking shortage of safety pins.

Darkness came on and with it a fine rain, as we cleared the town and halted on a level plain between soft fields of tender new wheat, which the horses sensed and snorted to get at. In twenty minutes, Mess Sergeant Kelly, from his high altar on the rolling kitchen, announced that the last of hot coffee had been dispensed. Somewhere up ahead in the darkness, battery bugle notes conveyed orders to prepare to mount. With the rattle of equipment and the application of endearing epithets, which horses unfortunately don't understand, we moved off at the sound of "forward."

Off on our left, a noiseless passenger train slid silently across the rim of the valley, blue dimmed lights in its coach windows glowing like a row of wet sulphur matches. Far off in the north, flutters of white light flushed the night sky and an occasional grumbling of the distant guns gave us our first impression of the battle of battles. Every man in our battery tingled with the thrill. This was riding frontward with the guns – this was rolling and rumbling on through the night up toward the glare and glamour of war. I was riding beside the captain at the head of the column. He broke silence.

"It seems like a far cry from Honolulu with the moon playing through the palm trees on the beach," he said quizzically, "to this place and these scenes and events to-night, but a little thing like a flip of coin decided it for me, and I'm blessing that coin to-night.

"A year ago January, before we came into the war, I was stationed at San Antonio. Another officer friend of mine was stationed there and one day he received orders to report for duty at Honolulu. He had a girl in San Antonio and didn't want to leave her and he knew I didn't have a girl and didn't give a damn where I went, or was sent, so long as it was with the army. He put up the proposition of mutual exchange being permitted under regulations.

"He wanted to take my place in San Antonio and give me his assignment in Honolulu, which I must say looked mighty good in those days to anybody who was tired of Texas. I didn't think then we'd ever come to war and besides it didn't make much difference to me one way or the other where I went. But instead of accepting the proposition right off the reel, I told Jim we'd flip a coin to decide.

"If it came tails, he would go to Honolulu. If it came heads, I would go to Honolulu. He flipped. Tails won. I'm in France and poor Jim is out there in Honolulu tending the Ukulele crop with prospects of having to stay there for some time. Poor devil, I got a letter from him last week.

"Do you know, man knows no keener joy in the world than that which I have to-night. Here I am in France at the head of two hundred and fifty men and horses and the guns and we're rolling up front to kick a dent in history. The poor unfortunate that ain't in this fight has almost got license to shoot himself. Life knows no keener joy than this."

It was a long speech for our captain, but his words expressed not only the feeling of our battery, but our whole regiment, from the humblest wagon driver up to the colonel who, by the way, has just made himself most unpopular with the regiment by being promoted to a Brigadier Generalship. The colonel is passing upward to a higher command and the regiment is sore on losing him. One of his humblest critics has characterised the event as the "first rough trick the old man ever pulled."

Midnight passed and we were still wheeling our way through sleeping villages, consulting maps under rays of flashlights, gathering directions some of the time from mile posts and wall signs, and at other times gaining knowledge of roads and turns and hills from sleepy heads in curl wrappers that protruded from bedroom chambers and were over-generous in advice.

The animals were tired. Rain soaked the cigarettes and made them draw badly. Above was drizzle and below was mud. There were a few grumbles, but no man in our column would have traded places with a brother back home even if offered a farm to boot.

It was after three in the morning when we parked the guns in front of a château, brought forward some lagging combat wagons and discovered the rolling kitchen had gone astray. In another hour the animals had been unhitched but not unharnessed, fed and watered in darkness and the men, in utter weariness, prepared to lie down and sleep anywhere. At this juncture, word was passed through the sections that the battery would get ready to move immediately. Orders were to clear the village by six o'clock. Neither men nor horses were rested, but we moved out on time and breakfasted on the road.

The way seemed long, the roads bad and the guns heavy. But we were passing through an Eden of beauty – green fields and rolling hills crested by ancient châteaux. At times, the road wound down through hillside orchards, white and pink with apple blooms. Fatigue was heavy on man and beast, but I heard one walking cannoneer singing, "When It's Apple Blossom-time in Normandie." Another rider in the column recalled the time when his father used to give him ten cents for standing on the bottom of an upturned tin basin and reciting, "Over the mountains winding down, horse and foot into Frederickstown."

"The jar of these guns as they grind over the gravel is enough to grind the heart out of you," said a sweating cannoneer who was pressing a helping shoulder to one of the heavies as we negotiated a steep hill.

"What in hell you kicking about," said the man opposite. "Suppose you was travelling with one of them guns the Germans are using on Paris – I mean that old John J. Longdistance. You'd know what heavy guns are then. They say that the gun's so big and takes so many horses to haul it, that the man who drives the lead pair has never spent the night in the same town with the fellow who rides wheel swing."

A young reserve lieutenant with mind intensely on his work, combined for my benefit his impressions of scenery with a lesson in artillery location. His characterisation of the landscape was as technical as it was unpoetical.

"A great howitzer country," was the tenor of his remarks. "Look at the bottom of that slide. Fine position for one fifty-five. Take that gully over there. That's a beaut of a place. No use talking. Great howitzer country."

During the afternoon, a veterinarian turned over two horses to a French peasant. One was exhausted and unable to proceed, and the other suffered a bad hoof, which would require weeks for healing. News that both animals were not going to be shot was received with joy by two men who had ridden them. I saw them patting the disabled mounts affectionately on the neck and heard one of them say,

"'Salright, old timer – 'salright. Frenchy here is going to take care of you all right. Uncle Sam's paying the bill and I am coming back and get you soon's we give Fritzie his bumps."

An hour later, a young cannoneer gave in to fatigue and ignored orders to the extent of reclining on gun trail and falling asleep. A rut in the road made a stiff jolt, he rolled off and one ponderous wheel of the gun carriage passed over him. One leg, one arm and two ribs were broken and his feet crushed, was the doctor's verdict as the victim was carried away in an ambulance.

"He'll get better all right," said the medico, "but he's finished his bit in the army."

The column halted for lunch outside of a small town and I climbed on foot to the hilltop castle where mediæval and modern were mixed in mute mélange. A drawbridge crossed a long dry moat to cracked walls of rock covered with ivy. For all its well preserved signs of artistic ruin, it was occupied and well fitted within. From the topmost parapet of one rickety looking tower, a wire stretched out through the air to an old, ruined mill which was surmounted by a modern wind motor, the tail of which incongruously advertised the words "Ideal power," with the typical conspicuity of American salesmanship.

Near the base of the old mill was another jumble of moss-covered rocks, now used as a summer house, but open on all sides. At a table in the centre of this open structure, sat a blond haired young American soldier with black receivers clamped to either ear. I approached and watched him jotting down words on a paper pad before him. After several minutes of intent silence, he removed the harness from his head and told me that he belonged to the wireless outfit with the artillery and this station had been in operation since the day before.

"Seems so peaceful here with the sun streaming down over these old walls," he said.

"What do you hear out of the air?" I asked.

"Oh, we pick up a lot of junk," he replied, "I'm waiting for the German communiqué now. Here's some Spanish stuff I just picked up and some more junk in French. The English stations haven't started this afternoon. A few minutes ago I heard a German aeroplane signalling by wireless to a German battery and directing its fire. I could tell every time the gun was ordered to fire and every time the aviator said the shot was short or over. It's kinder funny to sit back here in quiet and listen in the war, isn't it?" I agreed it was weird and it was.

In darkness again at the end of a hard day on the road, we parked the guns that night in a little village which was headquarters for our regiment and where I spent the night writing by an old oil lamp in the Mayor's office. A former Chicago bellhop who spoke better Italian than English and naturally should, was sleeping on a blanket roll on the floor near me. On the walls of the room were posted numerous flag-decked proclamations, some now yellow with the time that had passed over them since their issue back in 1914. They pertained to the mobilisation of the men of the village, men whose names remain now only as a memory.