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But in their place was the new khaki-clad Chicago bellhop snoring there on the floor and several thousand more as sturdy and ready as he, all billeted within a stone's throw of that room. They were here to finish the fight begun by those village peasants who had marched away four years before when the Mayor of the town posted that bulletin. These Americans stood ready to go down to honoured graves beside them.

Our division was under the French high command and was buried in the midst of the mighty preparations then on foot. Our ranks were full, our numbers strong, our morale high. Every officer and man in the organisation had the feeling that the eyes of dashing French comrades-in-arms and hard fighting British brothers were on them. Our inspiration was in the belief that the attention of the Allied nations of the world and more particularly the hope and pride of our own people across the sea, was centred upon us. With that sacred feeling, the first division stood resolute to meet the test.

Some of the disquieting news then prevalent in the nervous civilian areas back of the lines, reached us, but its effect, as far as I could see, was nil. Our officers and men were as unconcerned about the reports of enemy successes as though we were children in the nursery of a burning house and the neighbourhood was ringing with fire alarms. German advances before Amiens, enemy rushes gaining gory ground in Flanders, carried no shock to the high resolve that existed in the Allied reserves of which we were a part.

Our army knew nothing but confidence. If there was other than optimism to be derived from the current events, then our army was inclined to consider such a result as gratifying, because it could be calculated to create a greater measure of speed and assistance from the slowly functioning powers in America. The reasoning was that any possible pessimism would hurry to the wheel every American shoulder that had failed to take up its individual war burden under the wave of optimism. The army had another reason for its optimism. Our officers knew something about the dark days that had preceded the first battle at the Marne. They were familiar with the gloomy outlook in 1914 that had led to the hurried removal of the French government from Paris to Bordeaux. Our men recalled how the enemy was then overrunning Belgium, how the old British "Contemptibles" were in retreat, and how the German was within twenty miles of the French capital.

In that crisis had come the message by Foch and the brilliant stroke with which he backed it up. What followed was the tumble and collapse of the straddling German effort and the forced transformation in the enemy's plans from a war of six weeks to a war of four years.

Our army knew the man who turned the trick at the Marne. We knew that we were under his command, and not the slightest doubt existed but that it was now our destiny to take part in another play of the cards which would call and cash the German hand. Our forces in the coming engagements were staking their lives, to a man, on Foch's ace in the hole.

That was the deadly earnestness of our army's confidence in Foch. The capture of a hill top in Picardy or the loss of a village in Flanders had no effect upon that confidence. It found reinforcement in the belief that since March 21st, America had gained a newer and keener appreciation of her part in the war.

Our army began to feel that the American people, more than three thousand miles away from the battle fronts, would have a better understanding of the intense meaning that had been already conveyed in General Pershing's words, "Confidence is needed but overconfidence is dangerous." In other words, our soldiers in the field began to feel that home tendencies that underrated the enemy's strength and underestimated the effort necessary to overcome him, had been corrected. The army had long felt that such tendencies had made good material for Billy Sunday's sermons and spread-eagle speeches, but they hadn't loaded guns or placed men in the front line.

We felt that this crisis had brought to America a better realisation of the fact that Germany had not been beaten and that she was yet to be beaten and that America's share in the administration of that beating would have to be greater and more determined than had heretofore been deemed necessary. It was the hope of the army that this realisation would reach the people with a shock. Shocks were known to make realisations less easy to forget. Forgetfulness from then on might have meant Allied defeat.

Lagging memories found no billet in the personnel of that First Division. Its records, registering five hundred casualties, kept in mind the fact that the division had seen service on the line and still had scores to settle with the enemy.

Its officers and men, with but few exceptions, had undergone their baptism in German fire and had found the experience not distasteful. The division had esprit which made the members of every regiment and brigade in it vie with the members of any other regiment and brigade. If you had asked any enlisted man in the division, he would have told you that his company, battery, regiment or brigade "had it all over the rest of them."

That was the feeling that our division brought with them when we marched into Picardy to meet the German push. That was the spirit that dominated officers and men during the ten days that we spent in manœuvres and preparations in that concentration area in the vicinity of the ancient town of Chaumont-en-Vexin in the department of the Oise. It was the feeling that made us anxious and eager to move on up to the actual front.

CHAPTER XI
UNDER FIRE

On the day before our departure for the front from the concentration area in Picardy, every officer in the division, and they numbered almost a thousand, was summoned to the temporary divisional headquarters, where General Pershing addressed to them remarks which have since become known as the commander's "farewell to the First." We had passed out from his command and from then on our orders were to come from the commander of the French army to which the division was to be attached.

General Pershing stood on a mound at the rear of a beautiful château of Norman architecture, the Château du Jard, located on the edge of the town of Chaumont-en-Vexin. The officers ranged themselves in informal rows on the grass. Birds were singing somewhere above in the dense, green foliage, and sunlight was filtering through the leaves of the giant trees.

The American commander spoke of the traditions which every American soldier should remember in the coming trials. He referred to the opportunity then present for us, whose fathers established liberty in the New World, now to assist the Old World in throwing off its yoke of tyranny. Throughout this touching farewell to the men he had trained – to his men then leaving for scenes from which some of them would never return – the commander's voice never betrayed the depth of feeling behind it.

That night we made final arrangements for the morrow's move. I travelled with the artillery where orders were received for the reduction of all packs to the lightest possible as all men would be dismounted and the baggage wagons would be reserved for food, ammunition and officers' luggage only. Officers' packs, by the same order, had to shrink from one hundred and fifty pounds to twenty.

There were many misgivings that night as owners were forced to discard cherished belongings. Cumbersome camp paraphernalia, rubber bathtubs, pneumatic mattresses, extra blankets, socks, sweaters, etc., all parted company from erstwhile owners. That order caused many a heart-break and the abandonment of thousands of dollars' worth of personal equipment in our area.

I have no doubt that some of the village maidens were surprised at the remarkable generosity of officers and men who presented them with expensive toilet sets. Marie at the village estaminet received five of them all fitted in neat leather rolls and inscribed with as many different sets of initials. The old men of the town gloried in the sweaters, woollen socks and underwear.

There was no chance to fudge on the slim baggage order. An officer, bound by duty, weighed each officer's kit as it reached the baggage wagons and those tipping the scales at more than the prescribed twenty pounds, were thrown out entirely. I happened to be watching the loading when it came turn for the regimental band to stow away its encased instruments in one wagon. It must be remembered that musicians at the front are stretcher bearers. The baggage judge lifted the case containing the bass horn.

"No horn in the world ever weighed that much," he said. "Open it up," was the terse command. The case was opened and the base horn pulled out. The baggage officer began operations on the funnel. I watched him remove from the horn's interior two spare blankets, four pairs of socks, an extra pair of pants and a carton of cigarettes. He then inserted his arm up to the shoulder in the instrument's innards and brought forth two apples, a small tin of blackberry jam and an egg wrapped in an undershirt.

The man who played the "umpah umpah" in the band was heartbroken. The clarinet player, who had watched the operation and whose case followed for inspection, saved the inspector trouble by removing an easily hidden chain of sausage. I noticed one musician who was observing the ruthless pillage but, strangely, his countenance was the opposite of the others. He was actually smiling. I inquired the cause of his mirth.

"When we packed up, those guys with the big hollow instruments all had the laugh on me," he said. "Now I've got it on them. I play the piccolo."

All the mounted men under the rank of battery commanders were dismounted in order to save the horses for any possibilities in the war of movement. A dismounted artilleryman carrying a pack and also armed with a rifle, is a most disconsolate subject to view just prior to setting out for a long tramp. In his opinion, he has been reduced too near the status of the despised doughboy.

It really doesn't seem like artillery unless one has a horse to ride and a saddle to strap one's pack on. In the lineup before we started, I saw two of these gunners standing by weighted down with their cumbersome, unaccustomed packs. They were backed against a stone wall and were easing their burdens by resting the packs on the stone ledge. Another one similarly burdened passed and, in a most serious tone, inquired:

"Say, would either of you fellows like to buy another blanket roll?" The reply of two dejected gunners would bar this story from publication.

We were on the march early in the morning, but not without some initial confusion by reason of the inevitable higher orders which always come at the last minute to change programmes. On parallel roads through that zone of unmarred beauty which the Normans knew, our columns swung along the dusty highroads.

There were many who held that America would not be thoroughly awake to the full meaning of her participation in the war until the day there came back from the battlefields a long list of casualties – a division wiped out or decimated. Many had heard the opinions expressed in France and many firmly believed that nothing short of such a shock would arouse our nation to the exertion of the power and speed necessary to save the Allied cause from defeat.

On this march, that thought recurred to some and perhaps to many who refrained soberly from placing it in words. I knew several in the organisation who felt that we were on our way to that sacrifice. I can not estimate in how many minds the thought became tangible, but among several whom I heard seriously discussing the matter, I found a perfect willingness on their part to meet the unknown – to march on to the sacrifice with the feeling that if the loss of their life would help bring about a greater prosecution of the war by our country, then they would not have died in vain.

If this was the underlying spirit, it had no effect whatever upon outward appearances which could hardly be better described than with Cliff Raymond's lilting words: "There are roses in their rifles just the same." If this move was on to the sacrifice – if death awaited at the end of the road, then those men were marching toward it with a song.

It takes a hard march to test the morale of soldiers. When the feet are road-sore, when the legs ache from the endless pounding of hobnails on hard macadam, when the pack straps cut and burn to the shoulder blades, and the tin hat weighs down like a crown of thorns, then keep your ear open for a jest and if your hearing is rewarded, you will know that you march with men.

Many times that first day, those jests came to enliven dejected spirits and put smiles on sweat-rinsed faces. I recall our battery as it negotiated the steep hills. When the eight horses attached to the gun carriages were struggling to pull them up the incline, a certain subaltern with a voice slow, but damnably insistent, would sing out, "Cannoneers, to the wheels." This reiterated command at every grade forced aching shoulders already weary with their own burdens to strain behind the heavy carriages and ease the pull on the animals.

Once on a down grade, our way crossed the tracks of a narrow gauge railroad. Not far from the crossing could be seen a dinky engine puffing and snorting furiously in terrific effort to move up the hill its attached train of loaded ammunition cars. The engine was having a hard fight when some light-hearted weary one in our column gave voice to something which brought up the smile.

"Cannoneers, to the wheel!" was the shout and even the dignified subaltern whose pet command was the butt of the exclamation, joined in the wave of laughs that went down the line.

An imposing château of the second empire now presided over by an American heiress, the wife of a French officer, was regimental headquarters that night. Its barns and outbuildings were the cleanest in France according to individuals who had slept in so many barns that they feel qualified to judge.

"Painfully sanitary," said a young lieutenant, who remarked that the tile floor might make a stable smell sweeter but it hardly offered the slumbering possibilities of a straw shakedown. While the men arranged their blankets in those quarters, the horses grazed and rolled in green paddocks fenced with white painted rails. The cooks got busy with the evening meal and the men off duty started exploring the two nearby villages.

For the American soldier, financial deals were always a part of these explorations. It was seldom more than an hour after his arrival in a populated village before the stock market and board of trade were in full operation. These mobile establishments usually were set up in the village square if headquarters did not happen to be located too close. There were plenty to play the rôles of bulls and bears; there was much bidding and shouting of quotations.

The dealings were not in bushels of wheat or shares in oils or rails. Delicacies were the bartered commodities and of these, eggs were the strongest. The German intelligence service could have found no surer way to trace the peregrinations of American troops about France, than to follow up the string of eggless villages they left behind them.

As soon as billets were located, those without extra duty began the egg canvass of the town. There was success for those who made the earliest start and struck the section with the most prolific hens. Eggs were bought at various prices before news of the American arrivals had caused peasants to set up a new scale of charges. The usual late starter and the victim of arrangements was the officer's striker who lost valuable time by having to take care of his officer's luggage and get the latter established in billets. It was then his duty to procure eggs for the officer's mess.

By that time, all natural egg sources had been obliterated and the only available supply was cornered by the soldiers' board of trade. The desired breakfast food could be obtained in that place only. It was the last and only resort of the striker, who is euphoniously known as a dog robber. In the board of trade he would find soldiers with helmets full of eggs which could be bought at anywhere from two to three times their original price. It was only by the payment of such prices that the officer was able to get anything that could possibly leave a trace of yellow on his chin. If there was a surplus, the soldiers themselves had ample belt room to accommodate it.

In one village tavern, I saw one soldier eat fourteen eggs which he ordered Madame to fry in succession. I can believe it because I saw it. Madame saw it also, but I feel that she did not believe her eyes. A captain of the Judge Advocate's office also witnessed the gastronomic feat.

"Every one of those eggs was bought and paid for," he said. "Our department handles claims for all stolen or destroyed property and we have yet to receive the first claim from this town. Of course every one knows that a hungry man will steal to eat and there are those who hold that theft for the purpose of satisfying demands of the stomach is not theft. But our records show that the American soldier in France is ready to, willing to, and capable of buying what he needs outside of his ration allowance.

"We have some instances of stealing, but most of them are trivial. Recently, we took from the pay of one whole battalion the cost of thirty-one cheeses which were taken from a railroad restaurant counter. The facts were that some of our troops en route were hungry and the train was stopping only for five minutes and the woman behind the counter didn't have time to even take, much less change, the money offered, so the men grabbed the cheeses and ran out just in time to board the train as it was moving off.

"There was one case, though, in which Uncle Sam didn't have the heart to charge any one. He paid the bill himself and maybe if you could send the story back home, the citizens who paid it would get a laugh worth the money. It happened during a recent cold spell when some of our troops were coming from seaboard to the interior. They travelled in semi-opened horse cars and it was cold, damn cold.

"One of the trains stopped in front of a small railroad station and six soldiers with cold hands and feet jumped from the car and entered the waiting room, in the centre of which was a large square coal stove with red hot sides. One man stood on another one's shoulders and disjointed the stove pipe. At the same time, two others placed poles under the bottom of the stove, lifted it off the floor and walked out of the room with it.

"They placed it in the horse car, stuck the pipe out of one door and were warm for the remainder of the trip. It was the first time in the history of that little village that anybody had ever stolen a red hot stove. The French government, owning the railroads, made claim against us for four hundred francs for the stove and eleven francs' worth of coal in it. Uncle Sam paid the bill and was glad to do it.

"I know of only one case to beat that one and that concerned an infantryman who stole a hive full of honey and took the bees along with it. The medical department handled one aspect of the case and the provost marshal the other. The bees meted out some of the punishment and we stung his pay for the costs."

There was one thing, however, that men on the move found it most difficult to steal and that was sleep. So at least it seemed the next morning when we swung into the road at daybreak and continued our march into the north. Much speculation went the rounds as to our destination. The much debated question was as to whether our forces would be incorporated with Foch's reserve armies and held in readiness for a possible counter offensive, or whether we should be placed in one of the line armies and assigned to holding a position in the path of the German push. But all this conjecture resulted in nothing more than passing the time. Our way led over byroads and side lanes which the French master of circulation had laid down for us.

Behind an active front, the French sanctified their main roads and reserved them for the use of fast motor traffic and the rushing up of supplies or reserves in cases of necessity. Thousands of poilus too old for combat duty did the repair work on these main arteries. All minor and slow moving traffic was side-tracked to keep the main line clear. At times we were forced to cross the main highroads and then we encountered the forward and backward stream of traffic to and from the front. At one of those intersections, I sought the grass bank at the side of the road for rest. Two interesting actors in this great drama were there before me. One was an American soldier wearing a blue brassard with the white letters M. P. He was a military policeman on duty as a road marker whose function is to regulate traffic and prevent congestion.

Beside him was seated a peculiar looking person whose knee length skirts of khaki exposed legs encased in wrap puttees. A motor coat of yellow leather and the visored cap of a British Tommy completed the costume. The hair showing beneath the crown of the cap was rather long and straight, but betrayed traces of having been recently close cropped. For all her masculine appearance, she was French and the young road marker was lavishing upon her everything he had gleaned in a Freshman year of French in a Spokane high school.

I offered my cigarette case and was surprised when the girl refrained. That surprise increased when I saw her extract from a leather case of her own a full fledged black cigar which she proceeded to light and smoke with gusto. When I expressed my greater surprise, she increased it by shrugging her shoulders prettily, plunging one gauntleted hand into a side pocket and producing a pipe with a pouch of tobacco.

There was nothing dainty about that pipe. It had no delicate amber stem nor circlet of filigree gold. There was no meerschaum ornamentation. It was just a good old Jimmy pipe with a full-grown cake in the black burnt bowl, and a well bitten, hard rubber mouth piece. It looked like one of those that father used to consent to have boiled once a year, after mother had charged it with rotting the lace curtains. If war makes men of peace-time citizens, then —

But she was a girl and her name was Yvonne. The red-winged letter on her coat lapel placed her in the automobile service and the motor ambulance stationed at the road side explained her special branch of work. She inquired the meaning of my correspondent's insignia and then explained that she had drawn pastelles for a Paris publication before the war, but had been transporting blessés since. The French lesson proceeded and Spokane Steve and I learned from her that the longest word in the French language is spelled "Anticonstitutionellement." I expressed the hope that some day both of us would be able to pronounce it.

On the girl's right wrist was a silver chain bracelet with identification disk. In response to our interested gaze, she exhibited it to us, and upon her own volition, informed us that she was a descendant of the same family as Jeanne d'Arc. Steve heard and winked to me with a remark that they couldn't pull any stuff like that on anybody from Spokane, because he had never heard that that Maid of Orleans had been married. Yvonne must have understood the last word because she explained forthwith that she had not claimed direct descendence from the famous Jeanne, but from the same family. Steve looked her in the eye and said, "Jay compraw."

She explained the meaning of the small gold and silver medals suspended from the bracelet. She detached two and presented them to us. One of them bore in relief the image of a man in flowing robes carrying a child on his shoulder, and the reverse depicted a tourist driving a motor through hilly country.

"That is St. Christophe," said Yvonne. "He is the patron saint of travellers. His medal is good luck against accidents on the road. Here is one of St. Elias. He is the new patron saint of the aviators. You remember. Didn't he go to heaven in a fiery chariot, or fly up on golden wings or something like that? Anyhow, all the aviators wear one of his medals."

St. Christophe was attached to my identification disk. Steve declared infantrymen travelled too slowly ever to have anything happen to them and that he was going to give his to a friend who drove a truck. When I fell in line with the next passing battery and moved down the road, Spokane Steve and the Yvonne of the family of Jeanne had launched into a discussion of prize fighting and chewing tobacco.

In billets that night, in a village not far from Beauvais, the singing contest for the prize of fifty dollars offered by the battalion commander Major Robert R. McCormick was resumed with intense rivalry between the tenors and basses of batteries A and B. A "B" Battery man was croaking Annie Laurie, when an "A" Battery booster in the audience remarked audibly,

"Good Lord, I'd rather hear first call." First call is the bugle note that disturbs sleep and starts the men on the next day's work.

A worried lieutenant found me in the crowd around the rolling kitchen and inquired:

"Do you know whether there's a provost guard on that inn down the road?" I couldn't inform him, but inquired the reason for his alarm.

"I've got a hunch that the prune juice is running knee deep to-night," he replied, "and I don't want any of my section trying to march to-morrow with swelled heads."

"Prune juice" is not slang. It is a veritable expression and anybody who thinks that the favourite of the boarding house table cannot produce a fermented article that is très fort in the way of a throat burner, is greatly mistaken. In France the fermented juice of the prune is called "water of life," but it carries a "dead to the world" kick. The simple prune, which the army used to call "native son" by reason of its California origin, now ranks with its most inebriating sisters of the vine.

The flow of eau de vie must have been dammed at the inn. On the road the next day, I saw a mule driver wearing a sixteen candle power black eye. When I inquired the source of the lamp shade, he replied:

"This is my first wound in the war of movement. Me and the cop had an offensive down in that town that's spelt like Sissors but you say it some other way." I knew he was thinking of Gisors.

The third and fourth day's march brought us into regions nearer the front, where the movement of refugees on the roads seemed greater, where the roll of the guns came constantly from the north, where enemy motors droned through the air on missions of frightfulness.

There was a major in our regiment whose knowledge of French was confined to the single affirmative exclamation, "Ah, oui." He worked this expression constantly in the French conversation with a refugee woman from the invaded districts. She with her children occupied one room in the cottage. When the major started to leave, two days later, the refugee woman addressed him in a reproving tone and with tears. He could only reply with sympathetic "Ah, oui's," which seemed to make her all the more frantic.

An interpreter straightened matters out by informing the major that the woman wanted to know why he was leaving without getting her furniture.

"What furniture?" replied the puzzled major.

"Why, she says," said the interpreter, "that you promised her you would send three army trucks to her house back of the German lines and bring all of her household goods to this side of the line. She says that she explained all of it to you and you said, 'Ah, oui.'"

The major has since abandoned the "ah, oui" habit.

At one o'clock one morning, orders reached the battalion for reconnaissance detail; each battery to be ready to take road by daylight. We were off at break of day in motor trucks with a reel cart of telephone wire hitched on behind. Thirty minutes later we rumbled along roads under range of German field pieces and arrived in a village designated as battalion headquarters to find that we were first to reach the sector allotted for American occupation. The name of the town was Serevilliers.

Our ears did not delude us about the activity of the sector, but I found that officers and men of the detail were inclined to accept the heavy shelling in a non-committal manner until a French interpreter attached to us remarked that artillery action in the sector was as intense as any he had experienced at Verdun.

If the ever present crash of shells reminded us that we were opposite the peak of the German push, there was plenty of work to engage minds that might otherwise have paid too much attention to the dangers of their location. A chalk cellar with a vaulted ceiling and ventilators, unfortunately opening on the enemy side of the upper structure, was selected as the battalion command post. The men went to work immediately to remove piles of dirty billeting straw under which was found glass, china, silverware and family portraits, all of which had been hurriedly buried by the owners of the house not two weeks before.

While linemen planned communications, and battery officers surveyed gun positions, the battalion commander and two orienting officers went forward to the frontal zone to get the first look at our future targets and establish observation posts from which our firing could be directed. I accompanied the small party, which was led by a French officer familiar with the sector. It was upon his advice that we left the roads and took cuts across fields, avoiding the path and road intersections and taking advantage of any shelter offered by the ground.

Virgin fields on our way bore the enormous craters left by the explosion of poorly directed German shells of heavy calibre. Orders were to throw ourselves face downward upon the ground upon the sound of each approaching missile. There is no text book logic on judging from the sound of a shell whether it has your address written on it, but it is surprising how quick that education may be obtained by experience. Several hours of walking and dropping to the ground resulted in an attuning of the ears which made it possible to judge approximately whether that oncoming, whining, unseen thing from above would land dangerously near or ineffectively far from us. The knowledge was common to all of us and all of our ears were keenly tuned for the sounds. Time after time the collective judgment and consequent prostration of the entire party was proven well timed by the arrival of a shell uncomfortably close.