CHAPTER X

"'Millions of ages have come and gone,'The sergeant said as we held his hand;'They have passed like the mist of the early dawnSince I left my home in that far-off land.'"Ironquill.DURINGthe next couple of months, while I was laid up with my wound, the regiment first went to a rest sector near Pont-à-Mousson. There replacements reached them, wounded men returned, and they gradually worked up to their full strength again.They enjoyed themselves fully. It was one of those sectors so common on the east of the Western Front where by tacit agreement little action took place. The nature of the country and its distance from the great centers of France made many parts of the front impracticable for an offensive either by the Hun orourselves. In these sectors a division such as ours, worn by hard fighting, or a division of green or old men, held the line, a handful of men on each side occupying long stretches. A few shells would come whistling over during the day and that was all.Everybody used to look back on their pleasant times in this sector. They got fresh fish by the thoroughly illegal method of throwing hand grenades in some near-by ponds, while fresh berries were plentiful even in the front line. It was midsummer and the weather was pleasantly warm. Altogether, if you had to be at war, it was about as comfortable as possible.An odd incident of this period occurred to a recruit who was sent out the first night to a listening post. In the listening post was a box on which the guard sat. At some time during the previous night the Germans had crept up and put a bomb under this box. After looking around a little the recruit felt tired and sat down on the box. A violent explosion followed. Right away a patrolworked out from our lines to see what had happened. When they got there they looked carefully through every ditch or clump of bushes in the vicinity, but they could not find a trace of the man. He was reported as dead, blown to bits. On the march up into Germany that missing recruit reported back to the regiment on his return from a German prison camp. Instead of being blown to pieces he had simply been blown into the German lines. When he came to, he was being carried to the rear on a stretcher, and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, little the worse for wear, except for a few scars.Shortly after this the St. Mihiel operation took place. The plan was to nip off the salient by a simultaneous attack on both sides. Our division was the left flank unit of the forces attacking on the right of the salient, being charged with the mission of making a juncture with the Twenty-sixth Division, which was the right unit of the forces attacking on the left of the salient. The resistance was so slight that the operation partook of the natureof a maneuver rather than a battle. Our losses were practically nil. A large number of prisoners were captured and a considerable amount of matériel. The reason for this was that the Germans had determined to abandon the position and were in full retreat when we attacked. They had been misinformed by their spies, however, and started their movement about twenty-four hours too late.The men had a fine time in this attack. While they had been in the Toul sector a high hill, called Mount Sec, behind the German lines, had given them a lot of trouble. From it the Germans had been virtually able to look into our trenches. In the attack they not only took this hill, but left it far in the rear. Our unit captured a German officers' mess, including the cook and a fine pig. They promptly made the cook kill the pig and prepare him for their dinner, which they thoroughly enjoyed.At another time a German company kitchen came up in the night to one of our outposts to ask him directions. When they found outtheir mistake it was too late, and they were promptly conducted to one of our very hungry companies.The value of the St. Mihiel operation to our army was considerable. It gave our staffs an opportunity to make mistakes which were not too terribly costly. We fell down particularly on the question of handling our road traffic. The artillery and the trains in many instances became hopelessly jammed on the largely destroyed road. Each unit commander with laudable desire to get forward would do anything to accomplish that purpose—double back or cut across country. The result was, of course, a hopeless tangle. This alone would have prevented us carrying on a further attack, as no army can run away from its echelons of supply.Immediately on the completion of the attacks the First Division, in company with a number of others, was withdrawn from the line and moved west by marching to a position of readiness for the Argonne offensive, which was to take place in a couple of weeks.The march was made mainly by night, as every endeavor was being used to make a surprise attack. The troops bivouacked in the woods, keeping under cover during the day.The battle was a fierce one. During the first day the Americans made a clean break through, but the lack of training showed and they were unable to exploit their success properly. The various units became dislocated and orders could not be transmitted. The men were gallant, but gallantry is no use when you do not get orders and when supplies do not come up. As a result the Germans were able to gather themselves, and what might have been a rout became a fierce rear-guard action which lasted for more than a month.The First Division was held in army reserve and thrown in to take a particularly hard bit of territory. They were in eleven days in all and took all their objectives. As a result they were cited individually by General Pershing in General Orders No. 201. This order—I believe the only one of its kind issued during the war—follows:G. H. Q.American Expeditionary Forces,France, Nov. 10, 1918.General OrdersNo. 201.1. The Commander in Chief desires to make of record in the General Orders of the American Expeditionary Forces his extreme satisfaction with the conduct of the officers and soldiers of the First Division in its advance west of the Meuse between October 4th and 11th, 1918. During this period the division gained a distance of seven kilometers over a country which presented not only remarkable facilities for enemy defense but also great difficulties of terrain for the operation of our troops.2. The division met with resistance from elements of eight hostile divisions, most of which were first-class troops and some of which were completely rested. The enemy chose to defend its position to the death, and the fighting was always of the most desperate kind. Throughout the operations the officers and men of the division displayed the highest type of courage, fortitude, and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. In addition to many enemy killed, the division captured one thousand four hundred and seven of the enemy, thirteen 77-mm. field guns, ten trench mortars, and numerous machine guns and stores.3. The success of the division in driving a deep advance into the enemy's territory enabled an assault to be made on the left by the neighboring division against the northeastern portion of the Forest of Argonne, and enabled the First Division to advance to the right and outflank the enemy's position in front of the division on that flank.4. The Commander in Chief has noted in this division a special pride of service and a high state of morale, never broken by hardship nor battle.5. This order will be read to all organizations at the first assembly formation after its receipt. (14790-A-306.)By Command of General Pershing:James W. McAndrew,Chief of Staff.Official:Robert C. Davis,Adjutant General.The losses again were very heavy, nearly as heavy as at Soissons. It was in this battle Lieutenant T. D. Amory was killed while making a daring patrol. Amory was a gallant young fellow, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. He had originallybeen intelligence officer for my battalion and had been quite badly wounded by a shell fragment in the Montdidier sector. As soon as he was cured he reported back to the regiment and took up his old work as scout officer. When the division took over, contact had been lost with the enemy. A patrol was accordingly sent out at once, for it was possible that an attack would be ordered in the morning. Lieutenant Amory was given forty men and went out. Signal-corps men were put with him to carry a telephone. It turned out that the Germans were holding strong points rather than a continuous line of front. On account of this and the darkness he filtered through without finding them and unobserved by them. The first word his battalion commander received was a telephone message from the signal-sergeant, saying: "We have advanced about one and one half kilometers and there is no sign of the enemy. The Germans have opened on us from the right flank." Then: "They are firing on us from three sides. I believe we are surrounded." And, last: "Lieutenant Amory has just been shot through the head and killed."Captain Foster and Captain Wortley also were killed at this time, besides many other gallant officers and men. Foster when he died was but twenty-two years old. When he came over with the division, he was nothing but a curly-headed boy. In the year and a half that he spent in France he turned from a boy into a man. He was afraid of nothing and had a rarer virtue in that he was always in good spirits. He had been hit once before at Soissons. He had been platoon leader and adjutant. Later, on the death of the company commander, Captain Frey, he had taken command of a company. He, like Lieutenant Amory, was shot through the head by a machine gun.Wortley was an older man and had always been ambitious to join the regular army. He had served an enlistment in the regulars and had been a sergeant. Later at the Leavenworth School he had received his commission. Wortley also had been wounded at Soissons.Major Youell described to me a personal incident of this battle, which illustrates very well the dull leathery mind that everyone gets after a certain amount of bitter fighting and fatigue. As commander of the Second Battalion he had received orders for an attack. He was not sure of his objectives. He got out his very best prismatic compass, which he valued more than any of his other possessions, as it was virtually impossible to replace it, sighted carefully, determined the direction of the attack, ordered the advance, put the compass on the ground, and walked off, leaving it there. When he next thought of it the compass was gone for good.Another captain we had was thoroughly courageous personally, but he had one very bad fault. He could not keep his men under control. Once after an attack his battalion commander was checking up to see if the objectives were taken and all units in place. He found the objectives were taken all right, but that, in the instance of this one company, the company itself was missing! On theobjective was sitting simply the company commander and his headquarters group. The rest of the company had missed its direction advancing through a wood and got lost.I remember this same company commander in another action. We had been advancing behind tanks, which had all been disabled by direct fire from the Germans. I went forward to where he was lying with a handful of men by one of these tanks. I said to him, "Captain, where is your company?" He said, "I don't know, sir; but the Germans are there." He knew where the enemy were and was perfectly game to go on and attack them with his eight or nine men.Colonel Hjalmar Erickson was commander of the Twenty-sixth Infantry during this action. He was a fine troop leader and a powerful man physically. During a battle the higher command naturally want to know what is going on at the front. It is very difficult for the officer at the front to furnish these details; often he is busy, sometimes he knows nothing to tell. Once, during the firstArgonne battle, the higher command called upon Erickson. Nothing was happening, but Erickson was equal to the occasion."Yes, yes, everything is fine. What has happened? Our heavies have just started firing and it sounds good," was Erickson's reassuring message.Meanwhile I had been given a Class B rating and detailed as an instructor at the school of the line at Langres. After I had been there a short while I saw an officer from the First Division and told him I was awfully anxious to get back and felt quite up to field work again. A few days after that General Parker called up some of the commanding officers in the college on the telephone. I had one obstacle to overcome. I still had to walk with a cane, and, although this did not really make any difference to me from a physical standpoint, it was a question if I could get the medical department to pass me as Class A. We decided that the best way to do was to take the bull by the horns and go anyhow. I said good-by to the college one night and wentwith Major Gowenlock, of the division staff, directly back to the division. I was technically A. W. O. L. for a couple of weeks, but they don't court-martial you for A. W. O. L. if you go in the right direction, and my orders came through all right. On reporting to General Frank Parker, who was commanding the division, he assigned me to the command of my own regiment. When my orders finally came to the school directing me to report to C. G., of the First Division, for assignment to duty, I was commanding the regiment in battle.At about this time three cavalry troopers reported to the Twenty-sixth Infantry. They said they came from towns where they had been on military police duty. They stated that they had heard from a man in a hospital that the First Division was having a lot of fighting and so they had gone A. W. O. L. to join it. They were attached to one of the companies, and a letter was sent through regular channels saying that they were excellent men and we wanted their transfer to a combatant branch of the service. We phrased it this way inorder to tease one of our higher command who belonged to the cavalry. A long while later, as I recall, an answer came back directing me to send the men back to their outfit, but they were all either killed or wounded at that time.After the division was relieved from the Argonne it went into rest billets near the town of Ligny, there to rest and receive replacements before returning into the same battle. Advantage was taken of this brief period of rest to give leave to some of the enlisted personnel and officers. This was the first leave most of them had had since they had been in France. Captain Shipley Thomas took the men under his command to their area. He described to me on his return how on the way down all the men would talk about was: "Do you remember how we got that machine-gun nest? That was where McPherson got his." "Do you remember how Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Dobbs got those seventy-sevens by outflanking and surprising them?"By the time they had been at the Y. M. C. A. Leave Area twenty-four hours they had forgotten all this. For seven days they had a fine time and their point of view changed entirely. As the train carried them north through France, when they stopped at a station they would lean out of the windows and inveigle some unsuspecting M. P. close to the train. They would ask him with much earnestness what it was like at the front, explaining to him meanwhile that they were members of the Arkansas Balloon Corps, and when he got near enough throw soda-water bottles at his head. Later an indignant epistle reached me demanding an explanation and directing "an investigation to fix the responsibility." A commanding officer should know a great many things unofficially, and in this case my knowledge was all of an unofficial nature, so I was able with a clear conscience to indorse it back with the suggestion that they investigate some other unit.Captain J. B. Card, Captain Richards, and some other of the officers were given leave. They started immediately for Nice. While they were traveling down we received orders that we were to go back into the battle, sowires were awaiting them when they got off the train to report back to their units immediately. They made a good connection and spent only three hours at Nice. They reported back smiling and thought it was a good joke on themselves.General C. P. Summerall had been promoted to the command of a corps and General Frank Parker given command of the division. General Parker was also one of the First Division's own officers. Before getting the division he had in turn commanded the Eighteenth Infantry and the First Brigade. He had a fine theory for soldiering. Summarized briefly, it was that the way to handle troops was to explain to them, in so far as possible, all that was to take place and the importance of the actions of each individual man. He had all his officers out with the men as much as possible. He had them all emphasize to the private the importance of his individual intelligent action. This is a fine creed for a commanding officer, as it helps to give him the confidence of his men. Obedience is absolutely necessaryin a soldier, but unintelligent obedience is not nearly as valuable as intelligent obedience given with confidence in the man who issues the order. It is intelligent comprehension of the aims of an order that lends most to its proper execution.CHAPTER XTHE LAST BATTLE"The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,One blow on the forehead will finish the fight."Holmes.HARDLYhad the new replacements, some 1800 in all, learned to what company they belonged, when our definite orders reached us. The trucks arrived and we rattled off toward the front. We detrucked and bivouacked for a couple of days in a big wood while our supply trains came up. The weather, fortunately, was crisp and cool and bivouacking was really pleasant. What our mission was we did not know, but as we were to be in General Summerall's corps we were sure there would be plenty of fighting to go around.General Summerall himself came and spoke to each of the infantry regiments. The regiment was formed in a three-sided square and he spoke from the blank side.Almost immediately our orders arrived to move up. As usual we moved at night. The weather repented of its gentleness and cold heavy rain started. The roads were gone, the nights black, the columns splashed through mud with truck trains, with supplies for the troops ahead of us, crisscrossing and jamming by us. We passed the barren zone that had been No Man's Land for four years and was now again France.Early in the morning in a heavy mist we reached another patch of woods just in rear of where the line was. Here we gained contact with the Second Division that was ahead of us. They attacked the same day and again we received orders to follow them. On this night the maps played us a trick, for a road well marked turned out to be a little wood trail. All night long we moved down it single file to get forward a bare seven kilometers. A wood trail in the rain is bad enough for the first man that moves over it, but it is almostimpassable for the three thousandth man when his turn comes. We got through, however, and by morning the regiment was in place. The road was clogged with a stream of transports of all kinds—trucks, wagon trains, tanks, and tractors, double banked and stuck. Occasionally, passing by them on foot, you would hear some general's aide spluttering in his limousine at the delay and wet.Through this our supply train was brought forward by Captains Scott and Card and Lieutenant Cook with the uncanny ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible which had stood us in good stead many times. Indeed, the train beat the infantry and when we arrived, we found them there banked beside the road, with the kitchens smoking, and the food spreading a comforting aroma through the rain-rotted woods. Orders were received to march to Landreville. We gave the men hot chow and put the column in motion as soon as they had finished. The sun came out and dried us off and we felt more cheerful.Still following in the wake of the victoriousSecond Division, we passed through the desolate, war-battered little town of Landreville. There, to my intense astonishment, I suddenly came on my brother, Kermit, and my brother-in-law, Richard Derby, who was chief surgeon of the Second Division. My brother Kermit had transferred to the American army from the British, had finished his course at an artillery school, and was now reporting to the First Division for duty. Seeing them so unexpectedly was one of the most delightful surprises.We went into position at Landreville and sent out patrols, which immediately gained contact with the marines in our front, who were preparing to attack next day.That night my brother and I sat in a ruined shed, regimental headquarters, surrounded by dead Germans and Americans, and talked over all kinds of family affairs.Again the following night, as the Second Division's attack had been successful, we moved forward. Again it rained. Next morning we were bivouacked in the Bois de la Folie,but before evening were on the march again to another position. By the time we had reached this position, orders came to move forward again and we went into position in woods just south of Beaumont. Here the Colonel of the Ninth Infantry and I had headquarters together in an old farmhouse that had been used by the Germans as a prisoners' cage. It was surrounded by wire and filthy beyond description.Here we got orders that we were to take over from the division on the left of the Second Division and attack in the morning. By this time the troops had marched practically five nights in succession and also two of the days. Speaking of this, there is a military phrase which has always irritated me. It appears in all accounts of big battles. It is, "At this point fresh troops were thrown into action." There is no such thing as "throwing fresh troops" into action. By the time the troops get into action they have marched night after night and are thoroughly tired.The correct phrase should be, "troopsthat have suffered no casualties." For example, that night my three majors, Legge, Frazier, and Youell, all of them young men not more than twenty-eight years old, came in to get their orders for the attack. We all sat down on wooden benches in the cellar. Something happened which made it necessary for me to change part of my orders. Making the changes did not take more than five minutes in all. By the time I was through, all three of them had fallen asleep where they sat.After receiving the orders, I got in touch with the Second Division, and I want to say that when the next war comes I hope my side partners will be of the same type. Colonel Robert Van Horn, an old friend of mine, was commanding the Twenty-third Infantry, which was to be on the right flank. I was to attack with two battalions in line and one in support, my right flank on Beaumont, my left following a road that led north to Mouzon. Together Van Horn and I worked out our plans and arranged for the connections we wished to make. He had been fighting thenfor a number of days, but was just as keen to continue as a schoolboy in a game of football.That night again sunny France justified her reputation and for the fifth day in succession it rained. The troops moved forward and with the easy precision of veterans found their positions, got their direction, and checked in as in place at the moment of attack.At 5.35 in a heavy mist they went over the top. The Hun had, by this time, lost all his fight and we advanced for seven or eight kilometers to our objectives, Mouzon and Ville Montry. By 6.00 in the evening the sector was cleared, the troops established on the objectives, and the advanced elements fighting in Mouzon.Two of the German prisoners who were brought back early this day, an officer and his orderly, were nothing more than boys. They said they had been retreating for days and that they were so tired that they had not woke up until some of the Americans had prodded them with a bayonet.It was in this attack that, among others,one of the medical officers, Lieutenant Skillirs, was killed. Like most of our medical officers, he followed his work with absolute disregard for his personal safety. He was hit by a shell toward the end of the attack while crossing the shelled area to help some wounded.At 8 o'clock we received word that we were to withdraw from the sector we had taken and march into a position from which we should attack Sedan next morning. The Seventy-seventh Division was to extend its right and occupy the sector we were leaving. Word was sent to the majors to collect their commands and assemble them at a given point. All honor again to our supply company. They were there close in the rear of us and worked forward food to the men. At this time, with the men as tired as they were, it was of vital importance.I received my detailed orders from General F. C. Marshall at a little half-burned farm.By 8 o'clock the officers and men, who had marched and fought without stopping for twenty-four hours, were again assembledand moving west on the Beaumont-Stornay road. All night long the men plowed like mud-caked specters through the dark, some staggering as they walked. Once we had to move single file through our artillery, which was to follow in our rear. Often we had to take detours, as the Germans had mined the road. At one place a bridge over a stream was gone and the whole division had to cross over single file. Everyone had reached the last stages of exhaustion. Captain Dye, a corking good officer, fainted on the march, lay unconscious in the mud for an hour, came to, and joined his company before the morning attack. Major Frazier, while riding at the head of his battalion, fell asleep on his horse and rolled off.As I rode up and down the column I watched the men. Most of them were so tired that they said but little. Occasionally, however, I would run on to some of the old men, laughing and joking as usual. I remember hearing a sergeant, who was closing the rear of one platoon, say, "Ooh, la, la!""What is it, sergeant, aren't you getting enough exercise?" I said to him."Exercise, is it, sir? It's not the exercise I'm worried with, but I do be afraid that them Germans are better runners than we are! Faith, to get them is like trying to catch a flea under your thumb."Another time I passed an old sergeant called Johnson, at one of the five-minute rests."Sir," asked Johnson, "when do we hit 'em?""I'm not sure, sergeant," I said, "but I think about a kilometer and a half from here.""That's good," Johnson replied. "If we can once get them and do 'em up proper they will let us have a rest."Johnson voiced there the sentiments of the rank and file. They had been set a task and it never entered into their calculations that they could not do the task. They wanted to do it, do it well, and then have their rest.In the morning we passed through a Frenchunit at Omicourt and started our attack. By afternoon we were on the heights overlooking Sedan, where word reached us to halt our attack. Shortly after we were told to withdraw, turning over to the French. We found later that it was considered wise that the French should take Sedan on account of the large sentimental value attached to it because of the German victory there in the war of 1870.I waited in the sector until the troops had checked back, and then followed them to Chemery, where we were to spend the night. When I arrived I found the three battalion commanders sleeping in the stalls of a stable. As I came in one sat up and said: "Sir, I never knew until this minute what a lucky animal a horse is."A characteristic incident of the new spirit occurred in this attack. Lieutenant Leck of E Company was assigned the task of occupying the town of Villemontry with a platoon. After severe hand-to-hand fighting on the streets he succeeded. The rapidity ofthe attack prevented the Germans from carrying off some French girls with them. The town was under heavy fire and the runner who was sent with the message directing the withdrawal and the march on Sedan was killed before he reached them. After the relieving unit arrived a message was sent to Leck that his regiment had withdrawn. He replied that the First Division never gave up conquered ground and he would hold the town until he received word from his proper commander.The next day we moved to the south and east. The plan of the higher command, I have been informed, was to throw the First, Second, Thirty-second, and Forty-second Divisions across the Meuse in an attack on Metz, to assign no objectives but to let the rivalry in the divisions determine the depth of the advance.All through the last ten days vague rumors had been reaching us concerning a proposed armistice. None of us really believed there was anything in them. This was largely on account of the fact that during the year anda half we had grown so accustomed to war that we could not imagine peace. Besides, we felt that terms that would be in any way acceptable to us would not be even given a hearing by the Germans. We felt also that we had them on the run and we wanted to go in and finish them. As a matter of fact, we didn't give much thought to it anyhow. We had almost as much as we could do finishing the job we had in hand.On the march one day I heard one man discussing with the other members of his squad. He finished his remarks by saying, "I hope those damned politicians don't spoil this perfectly good victory we are winning."As we were moving back a day later an engineer officer rode up to me from the rear and told me he had just come from Second Division headquarters, where they had announced that the armistice had been signed and all hostilities were to cease at 11 o'clock that morning. I sent back word to the men. It was announced up and down the column and a few scattering cheers were all thatgreeted it. I don't think it really got through their heads what had happened. I know it had not got through mine.That night we stopped in the Bois de la Folie, and for the first time the men began to realize what had happened. Fires were lit all over. Around them men were gathered, singing songs and telling stories. It was very picturesque: the battered woods, the flaming fires, and the brown, mud-caked soldiers. The contrast was doubly great, as until that time no fires were lighted by the troops when anywhere near the front lines. German airplanes always came over and as the men expressed it, "laid eggs wherever they saw a light."The first thing that really brought it home to me personally was when a little military chauffeur came up through the dark and said, "Colonel, Mrs. Roosevelt is waiting in the car at the corner."I knew that no women had been anywhere near the front the day before. I realized that this really meant that the war was over.The car came up and skidded around in the deep mud. Mrs. Roosevelt was there in a pair of rubber boots. She had somehow managed to come because she wished to say good-by to me and return to our children in the United States now that the fighting was over. I went back with her some ten kilometers to a tent where some Y. M. C. A. men were giving out chocolates, crackers, etc.All the way back through the night the sky was lit by the fires of the men. On every side rockets were going up, like a Fourth of July celebration. Gas signals and barrage signals flashed over the tree tops. The whole thing seemed hardly possible.Although we had been there in France only a year and a half, it seemed as if the war had lasted interminably. It seemed as if it always had been and always would be with us. All our plans had been based on an indefinite continuation. I had been rather an optimist, and yet I did not consider the possibility of a cessation of hostilities before the following autumn. Much of the quaint philosophy ofthe French had sunk into our hearts and insensibly became a part of us—the philosophy which had its creed in the expressionC'est la guerre. To them and to usC'est la guerrehad much the significance of "All in the day's work." Like them, we treatedaprès la guerreas something in the nature of "castles in Spain."So the war finished, so our part in the fighting came to an end; a page of the world's history was turned and we moved south to Verdun to prepare for our march into conquered Germany.CHAPTER XIUP THE MOSELLE AND INTO CONQUERED GERMANY"Judex ergo cum sedebitQuidquid latet, apparebitNil, inultum remanebit."Celano.THEThird Army, which was to march into Germany as the army of occupation, was all in place on the 15th of November. My regiment was bivouacked in what had once been a wood, northeast of shell-shattered Verdun. The bleakest of bleak north winds whistled over the hilltops, whirling the gray dust in clouds. The men huddled around fires or burrowed into cracks in the hillside. Here we prepared as well as we could for our move forward.Before dawn on the 17th of November, the infantry advanced in two parallel columns. By sunrise we were over the German lines andthe brown columns were winding down the white, dusty roads through villages long beaten out of the semblance of human habitation by the shells. Gazing back down the column, the thought that always struck uppermost was the realization of strength. The infantry column moves slowly, but the latent power in the close mass of marching men is very impressive. The only thing I know which compares with it in suggestion of power is a line of great gray dreadnaughts lunging across the water.At one village a young French soldier, who had been riding on a bicycle by our column, stopped sadly before three crumbling walls. It was all that was left of his home. His father, the mayor of the village, had lived there. His mother had died in Germany and he did not know what had become of his father.By night we were out of the uninhabited parts and were reaching the freed French villages. Here we found starving men, women, and children whom we helped out from our none-too-plentiful rations. These people were pathetic. They seemed to have lost thepower to rejoice. They looked at us from their doors with lackluster eyes and apparent indifference. One woman told me that the Germans as they left her house had told her they would be back soon. I asked her if she believed it, and she simply shrugged her shoulders.Next morning we were on the march again. All day long, past our advancing columns, streamed the prisoners whom the Germans had been working in the coal mines. They were French, Italian, Russian, and Rumanian, desperately emaciated for the most part and still wearing their old uniforms. Sometimes they dragged behind them little carts containing the possessions of two or three of them. Often I stopped them and questioned them, but whether they were French or not they seemed to have one idea, and one only—to put as many miles between them and Germany as possible.We had sent back to where our baggage was stored while we were at Verdun and brought up our colors and our band. Now we putthem at the head of the column and went forward with band playing and colors flying.The farther we got from where the front line had been, the better was the condition of the inhabitants. Now we began to see the first signs of rejoicing. News would reach the authorities in villages that we were coming some time before we arrived. They would throw arches of flowers over the streets through which we marched. Groups of little girls would run by the side of the column, giving bouquets to the men. Cheering crowds would gather on the sides of the road.The doughboy had a beautiful time. The doughboy loves marching to music, with flags flying and the populace cheering. He is very human and is fond of showing off. For some reason or other there is a current belief in this country that the average American does not like parades, decorations, etc. This is just bosh. The average American is just as keen for such things as anyone else. He likes to put on a pretty ribbon and come home andbe admired by the young ladies. I know I like to put on my decorations for my wife.In every little town where we spent the night a ceremony of some sort took place. Generally the townspeople made us an American flag and presented it to us. I have some of these flags stowed away at this moment. They were made with the help of old dictionaries. Sometimes these dictionaries were very old and the American flag of one hundred years ago would be the one copied. At one village we were presented with a flag with fifty stars. The donor explained that he had been in the United States and knew we had forty-eight and that the two extra were for Alsace and Lorraine.Once, while we were at mess in the evening, with great ceremony it was announced that a committee of young ladies desired to wait on me. I bowed to the girdle and said, "Will they come in?" They trooped in, peasant girls from fourteen to twenty years old, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and headed by the mayor's daughter. Theyhad a flag with them. First, one of them made an elaborate speech, in which we were hailed as the sons of Lafayette and George Washington, a slight historical inaccuracy. Then I replied, calling upon the names of Joan of Arc, Henry of Navarre, and others, and then the spokeslady, to the intense delight of my staff, stepped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. At another time a large, corpulent, much-bewhiskered mayor endeavored to enact the same ceremony, but forewarned is forearmed, and I evaded him.In a short time we came to the Duchy of Luxembourg and marched over the border. Everywhere here also we were met with open arms. The streets were jammed as we marched through the villages. All the world and his wife were there and greeted us as "Comrades glorious" and "Victors."We sent forward, as was customary, a detail of officers to make sure that billeting accommodations were forthcoming and that everything would be as comfortable as possible for the men. When I arrived, slightly in advanceof the troops, the first thing I saw was a procession of townfolk approaching. At its head was a band which might, for all the world, have come out of the comic opera. Following the band were pompous gentlemen in frock coats and top hats, carrying bouquets of gorgeous flowers done up with ribbons, and making up the body of the procession were people of every age, both sexes, and every grade in society. I realized they were heading for me, and with great dignity descended from the dinky little side car in which I had been traveling. Major Legge and Lieutenant Ridgely here joined me and explained that a ceremony of welcome was to take place, and I was to represent the United States! We three lined up solemnly while the Luxembourgers formed a semicircle around us. The ceremony was, first, the presentation speech; second, the keys of the city and armfuls of bouquets, and, third, a cheer for America; and then the band played. We none of us knew the Luxembourg national anthem, but felt that this must be it, so we stood at attention with great solemnity and salutedwhile it was sounding. When it was finished the mayor started it off again with a cheer for France and the same supposedly national anthem. Again we stood at attention. We went through this same ceremony for six of the Allies, when fortunately the troops came up and terminated it. Later I found that the tune they played and to which we had been rendering the formal compliment was the air of a popular song. The warm welcome would have impressed me more had I not been certain it had been accorded equally to the Germans when they marched through.Meanwhile the Eighteenth Infantry of our division had passed on our left flank through the city of Luxembourg. That day I ran down with a couple of officers to watch them parade. It was the first time I had ever been in Luxembourg. The city is very picturesque. It is built on the side of a rocky gorge, and on one jutting pinnacle of rock are the remains of the feudal castle where a medieval emperor of Germany was born. The fête amused me very much. I felt as if I were living in GeorgeBarr McCutcheon'sGraustark. The Luxembourg army was drawn up to receive our troops, all the men being present, 150 sum total. What they lacked in numbers they made up in gorgeousness. Never have I seen such beautiful uniforms, so many colors, so much gold lace, and such absurdly antiquated rifles. The populace had a beautiful time. They are mercantile by temperament. They realized that a reign of plenty was coming; that the American goose that lays the golden eggs would be in their midst and that money would flow as the changeless current of their own Moselle River.A couple of days' march farther and we reached the banks of the Moselle. Here we spent four or five days while the troops cleaned up and rested in three small towns. The regimental band played for different units every day. Everything moved smoothly. The inhabitants were gentle and kindly. Indeed, they were so effective in their kindness that one of the second battalion headquarters cooks, called "Chops," came to grief. First, he drankall of their wine he could get, then, in an inspired spirit of generosity, cooked and turned over to his new friends the turkey which, with much labor, had been secured for the officers' Thanksgiving dinner. His generosity was sadly misunderstood by his commanding officer, for he was returned to duty with the mule train from which he had come.On the fifth of December we resumed the march and crossed the Moselle into conquered Germany. From this time on a new element was added to the chances of campaigning. Our maps were perfectly impossible. You never could tell where bridges were and where there were simply ferries. Once we ran our column directly into a pocket. The map showed what looked like a bridge. We were not allowed to scout ahead, and the interpreter's questions seemed to confirm its existence. When we got there we found a ferry that accommodated only sixteen men at a time and we had to double on our tracks. On these maps, also, the roads all looked good. The first day's march in Germany we nearly lost the supply train on account of this, as a seemingly good highway ended in a marsh.i_271THE RHINE AT COBLENZDrawn by Captain Ernest Peixotto, A. E. F.That night we billeted for the first time in German territory. Regimental headquarters were in the country house of a German officer. On the news of our advance he had fled farther north, but, with the characteristic affectation of his class, telephoned, on our arrival, saying he regretted that he would not be there to receive us and hoped that we would be comfortable. Next morning he telephoned again, sending a message to the effect that if any of his servants had not done everything for our comfort would we please report the matter to him immediately in order that he might punish the offender.All the next day we moved up the banks of the winding Moselle through Treves, where relics of the old Roman buildings frowned down on us as we passed. At night we stopped in another German house, from which the German officer had not fled. He was a lieutenant colonel and had waited to receive us, prepared to be butler or anything we demanded.A real indication of the character of the German soldier was given by the terror of the women at our approach. It was clear that they expected any outrage. On account of this, on arriving in each town, when I would call the burgomaster to give him the instructions concerning the behavior of the townspeople, I would finish up by directing him to announce to all women and children that they need have no fear concerning the actions of any American soldier, that we were Americans, not Germans. I had my interpreter see that it was given out in this form.Day after day we followed the river or made short cuts inland. As we marched along, on hilltops on either side, silhouetted against the sky, austere and dignified, were the crumbling brown-rock towers of medieval castles. These castles were destroyed more than two centuries before by Louis XIV as he marched by the same route. On either side of the river the slopes rose abruptly. They were covered with vineyards, apparently growing from the brown shale. Once, when we passed throughthe city of Berncastle, in the early morning, when the mist choked the valley, I looked up and saw on the peak that overhung the town, touched by the morning sun, the old keep framed in the white mist like a cameo set in mother-of-pearl. Time and again some Hun farmer would stop me and take me through a cow-shed to see the marble remains of some Roman bath or villa, the name of whose owner had long since vanished in the mists of time.An odd incident of this march occurred when Lieutenant Barrett was ordered by me to go and instruct a German soldier we were passing concerning certain of our regulations. When Barrett reported back, he told me the man had come from his own home town in Indiana.One thing that struck us all as we left France and reached Germany was the number of children. In France children are rare. Each community you passed you felt was composed of grown people. In Germany the streets were full of them—healthy-looking little rascals, pink-cheeked and well-nourished, wearing diminutivegray-blue uniforms like those of the German soldier. Little machine gunners, the men used to call them, for they looked like so many small replicas of those men we had been killing and who had killed us. Immediately upon the proclamation going out that the children would be in no way molested, these little rascals swarmed over everything. Nothing could satisfy their curiosity.After weaving our way up the river valley and over the hills, one early December morning we found ourselves winding down from the surrounding hills toward the Rhine. As we swung around a rocky corner, the whole panorama lay before us—the gables and steeples of the town of Boppard with, as a background, the broad, undisturbed silver Rhine. On we wound down the rocky slope into the city, the flag flying at the head of the column. That night I formed the entire regiment in line on the terraced water front facing the river and, with the band playingThe Star-Spangled Banner, stood retreat.We waited here a day and then marcheddown the river to Coblenz. On this march we passed through one village, with old gates, little jutting houses carved and painted in bright colors, unchanged sixteenth-century Europe. Next was another village, factory towers smoking, great brick buildings filled with machinery, plain little board houses for the workmen, the epitome of modernism.The night of December 12th we billeted at Coblenz. Next morning, at seven o'clock, the First Division in two columns crossed the Rhine, the first of the American troops. As the head of the column reached the center of the bridge and I looked at massive Ehrenbreitstein and up and down the historic river, I felt this truly marked the end of an era.Two days more brought us to the end of the bridgehead, where we were to take up our position. Division headquarters were in quite a large town called Montabaur, a name supposed to have been brought back with the early crusaders,i. e., Mount Tabor. Two castles overlooked the town, one in ruins, the other still used as an administrative buildingby the town authorities. The regiment was scattered through the surrounding small country villages.Quarters for the men were good in comparison with what they had been used to. We were able to get washing facilities, food came up regularly, and now, for the first time, proper equipment. The men really enjoyed themselves for the first week or so. We had no trouble with fraternization. Our men had seen too many of their friends and relations killed to care to have anything to do with their late enemies. Like true Americans, they played with the children and flirted with the women whenever opportunity offered, but I never remember seeing any attempt to become familiar with the men.Now that the work of fighting was over, uppermost in everyone's mind was the thought, "When do we get home?" The minuteman wanted to go back to ordinary life and his family. Time and again when I first returned to this country people would ask me what I thought the soldiers thought of this or thatpublic question. I always replied truthfully that the men were so busy thinking about what a good place the United States was, how much better in their opinion than any of the European countries they had been to, that all they were interested in was, when will that transport leave.In January I was ordered to Paris on sick leave. Shortly after, I sailed for home on theMauretaniaand saw the mass of New York lift on the horizon, where my three children, who had practically forgotten me, were waiting. So ends the active participation of an average American with average Americans in the war.CHAPTER XIIAFTERWARDS

"'Millions of ages have come and gone,'The sergeant said as we held his hand;'They have passed like the mist of the early dawnSince I left my home in that far-off land.'"Ironquill.

"'Millions of ages have come and gone,'The sergeant said as we held his hand;'They have passed like the mist of the early dawnSince I left my home in that far-off land.'"

Ironquill.

DURINGthe next couple of months, while I was laid up with my wound, the regiment first went to a rest sector near Pont-à-Mousson. There replacements reached them, wounded men returned, and they gradually worked up to their full strength again.

They enjoyed themselves fully. It was one of those sectors so common on the east of the Western Front where by tacit agreement little action took place. The nature of the country and its distance from the great centers of France made many parts of the front impracticable for an offensive either by the Hun orourselves. In these sectors a division such as ours, worn by hard fighting, or a division of green or old men, held the line, a handful of men on each side occupying long stretches. A few shells would come whistling over during the day and that was all.

Everybody used to look back on their pleasant times in this sector. They got fresh fish by the thoroughly illegal method of throwing hand grenades in some near-by ponds, while fresh berries were plentiful even in the front line. It was midsummer and the weather was pleasantly warm. Altogether, if you had to be at war, it was about as comfortable as possible.

An odd incident of this period occurred to a recruit who was sent out the first night to a listening post. In the listening post was a box on which the guard sat. At some time during the previous night the Germans had crept up and put a bomb under this box. After looking around a little the recruit felt tired and sat down on the box. A violent explosion followed. Right away a patrolworked out from our lines to see what had happened. When they got there they looked carefully through every ditch or clump of bushes in the vicinity, but they could not find a trace of the man. He was reported as dead, blown to bits. On the march up into Germany that missing recruit reported back to the regiment on his return from a German prison camp. Instead of being blown to pieces he had simply been blown into the German lines. When he came to, he was being carried to the rear on a stretcher, and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, little the worse for wear, except for a few scars.

Shortly after this the St. Mihiel operation took place. The plan was to nip off the salient by a simultaneous attack on both sides. Our division was the left flank unit of the forces attacking on the right of the salient, being charged with the mission of making a juncture with the Twenty-sixth Division, which was the right unit of the forces attacking on the left of the salient. The resistance was so slight that the operation partook of the natureof a maneuver rather than a battle. Our losses were practically nil. A large number of prisoners were captured and a considerable amount of matériel. The reason for this was that the Germans had determined to abandon the position and were in full retreat when we attacked. They had been misinformed by their spies, however, and started their movement about twenty-four hours too late.

The men had a fine time in this attack. While they had been in the Toul sector a high hill, called Mount Sec, behind the German lines, had given them a lot of trouble. From it the Germans had been virtually able to look into our trenches. In the attack they not only took this hill, but left it far in the rear. Our unit captured a German officers' mess, including the cook and a fine pig. They promptly made the cook kill the pig and prepare him for their dinner, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

At another time a German company kitchen came up in the night to one of our outposts to ask him directions. When they found outtheir mistake it was too late, and they were promptly conducted to one of our very hungry companies.

The value of the St. Mihiel operation to our army was considerable. It gave our staffs an opportunity to make mistakes which were not too terribly costly. We fell down particularly on the question of handling our road traffic. The artillery and the trains in many instances became hopelessly jammed on the largely destroyed road. Each unit commander with laudable desire to get forward would do anything to accomplish that purpose—double back or cut across country. The result was, of course, a hopeless tangle. This alone would have prevented us carrying on a further attack, as no army can run away from its echelons of supply.

Immediately on the completion of the attacks the First Division, in company with a number of others, was withdrawn from the line and moved west by marching to a position of readiness for the Argonne offensive, which was to take place in a couple of weeks.The march was made mainly by night, as every endeavor was being used to make a surprise attack. The troops bivouacked in the woods, keeping under cover during the day.

The battle was a fierce one. During the first day the Americans made a clean break through, but the lack of training showed and they were unable to exploit their success properly. The various units became dislocated and orders could not be transmitted. The men were gallant, but gallantry is no use when you do not get orders and when supplies do not come up. As a result the Germans were able to gather themselves, and what might have been a rout became a fierce rear-guard action which lasted for more than a month.

The First Division was held in army reserve and thrown in to take a particularly hard bit of territory. They were in eleven days in all and took all their objectives. As a result they were cited individually by General Pershing in General Orders No. 201. This order—I believe the only one of its kind issued during the war—follows:

G. H. Q.American Expeditionary Forces,France, Nov. 10, 1918.General OrdersNo. 201.1. The Commander in Chief desires to make of record in the General Orders of the American Expeditionary Forces his extreme satisfaction with the conduct of the officers and soldiers of the First Division in its advance west of the Meuse between October 4th and 11th, 1918. During this period the division gained a distance of seven kilometers over a country which presented not only remarkable facilities for enemy defense but also great difficulties of terrain for the operation of our troops.2. The division met with resistance from elements of eight hostile divisions, most of which were first-class troops and some of which were completely rested. The enemy chose to defend its position to the death, and the fighting was always of the most desperate kind. Throughout the operations the officers and men of the division displayed the highest type of courage, fortitude, and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. In addition to many enemy killed, the division captured one thousand four hundred and seven of the enemy, thirteen 77-mm. field guns, ten trench mortars, and numerous machine guns and stores.3. The success of the division in driving a deep advance into the enemy's territory enabled an assault to be made on the left by the neighboring division against the northeastern portion of the Forest of Argonne, and enabled the First Division to advance to the right and outflank the enemy's position in front of the division on that flank.4. The Commander in Chief has noted in this division a special pride of service and a high state of morale, never broken by hardship nor battle.5. This order will be read to all organizations at the first assembly formation after its receipt. (14790-A-306.)By Command of General Pershing:James W. McAndrew,Chief of Staff.Official:Robert C. Davis,Adjutant General.

G. H. Q.American Expeditionary Forces,

France, Nov. 10, 1918.

General OrdersNo. 201.

1. The Commander in Chief desires to make of record in the General Orders of the American Expeditionary Forces his extreme satisfaction with the conduct of the officers and soldiers of the First Division in its advance west of the Meuse between October 4th and 11th, 1918. During this period the division gained a distance of seven kilometers over a country which presented not only remarkable facilities for enemy defense but also great difficulties of terrain for the operation of our troops.

2. The division met with resistance from elements of eight hostile divisions, most of which were first-class troops and some of which were completely rested. The enemy chose to defend its position to the death, and the fighting was always of the most desperate kind. Throughout the operations the officers and men of the division displayed the highest type of courage, fortitude, and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. In addition to many enemy killed, the division captured one thousand four hundred and seven of the enemy, thirteen 77-mm. field guns, ten trench mortars, and numerous machine guns and stores.

3. The success of the division in driving a deep advance into the enemy's territory enabled an assault to be made on the left by the neighboring division against the northeastern portion of the Forest of Argonne, and enabled the First Division to advance to the right and outflank the enemy's position in front of the division on that flank.

4. The Commander in Chief has noted in this division a special pride of service and a high state of morale, never broken by hardship nor battle.

5. This order will be read to all organizations at the first assembly formation after its receipt. (14790-A-306.)

By Command of General Pershing:

James W. McAndrew,Chief of Staff.

Official:Robert C. Davis,Adjutant General.

The losses again were very heavy, nearly as heavy as at Soissons. It was in this battle Lieutenant T. D. Amory was killed while making a daring patrol. Amory was a gallant young fellow, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. He had originallybeen intelligence officer for my battalion and had been quite badly wounded by a shell fragment in the Montdidier sector. As soon as he was cured he reported back to the regiment and took up his old work as scout officer. When the division took over, contact had been lost with the enemy. A patrol was accordingly sent out at once, for it was possible that an attack would be ordered in the morning. Lieutenant Amory was given forty men and went out. Signal-corps men were put with him to carry a telephone. It turned out that the Germans were holding strong points rather than a continuous line of front. On account of this and the darkness he filtered through without finding them and unobserved by them. The first word his battalion commander received was a telephone message from the signal-sergeant, saying: "We have advanced about one and one half kilometers and there is no sign of the enemy. The Germans have opened on us from the right flank." Then: "They are firing on us from three sides. I believe we are surrounded." And, last: "Lieutenant Amory has just been shot through the head and killed."

Captain Foster and Captain Wortley also were killed at this time, besides many other gallant officers and men. Foster when he died was but twenty-two years old. When he came over with the division, he was nothing but a curly-headed boy. In the year and a half that he spent in France he turned from a boy into a man. He was afraid of nothing and had a rarer virtue in that he was always in good spirits. He had been hit once before at Soissons. He had been platoon leader and adjutant. Later, on the death of the company commander, Captain Frey, he had taken command of a company. He, like Lieutenant Amory, was shot through the head by a machine gun.

Wortley was an older man and had always been ambitious to join the regular army. He had served an enlistment in the regulars and had been a sergeant. Later at the Leavenworth School he had received his commission. Wortley also had been wounded at Soissons.

Major Youell described to me a personal incident of this battle, which illustrates very well the dull leathery mind that everyone gets after a certain amount of bitter fighting and fatigue. As commander of the Second Battalion he had received orders for an attack. He was not sure of his objectives. He got out his very best prismatic compass, which he valued more than any of his other possessions, as it was virtually impossible to replace it, sighted carefully, determined the direction of the attack, ordered the advance, put the compass on the ground, and walked off, leaving it there. When he next thought of it the compass was gone for good.

Another captain we had was thoroughly courageous personally, but he had one very bad fault. He could not keep his men under control. Once after an attack his battalion commander was checking up to see if the objectives were taken and all units in place. He found the objectives were taken all right, but that, in the instance of this one company, the company itself was missing! On theobjective was sitting simply the company commander and his headquarters group. The rest of the company had missed its direction advancing through a wood and got lost.

I remember this same company commander in another action. We had been advancing behind tanks, which had all been disabled by direct fire from the Germans. I went forward to where he was lying with a handful of men by one of these tanks. I said to him, "Captain, where is your company?" He said, "I don't know, sir; but the Germans are there." He knew where the enemy were and was perfectly game to go on and attack them with his eight or nine men.

Colonel Hjalmar Erickson was commander of the Twenty-sixth Infantry during this action. He was a fine troop leader and a powerful man physically. During a battle the higher command naturally want to know what is going on at the front. It is very difficult for the officer at the front to furnish these details; often he is busy, sometimes he knows nothing to tell. Once, during the firstArgonne battle, the higher command called upon Erickson. Nothing was happening, but Erickson was equal to the occasion.

"Yes, yes, everything is fine. What has happened? Our heavies have just started firing and it sounds good," was Erickson's reassuring message.

Meanwhile I had been given a Class B rating and detailed as an instructor at the school of the line at Langres. After I had been there a short while I saw an officer from the First Division and told him I was awfully anxious to get back and felt quite up to field work again. A few days after that General Parker called up some of the commanding officers in the college on the telephone. I had one obstacle to overcome. I still had to walk with a cane, and, although this did not really make any difference to me from a physical standpoint, it was a question if I could get the medical department to pass me as Class A. We decided that the best way to do was to take the bull by the horns and go anyhow. I said good-by to the college one night and wentwith Major Gowenlock, of the division staff, directly back to the division. I was technically A. W. O. L. for a couple of weeks, but they don't court-martial you for A. W. O. L. if you go in the right direction, and my orders came through all right. On reporting to General Frank Parker, who was commanding the division, he assigned me to the command of my own regiment. When my orders finally came to the school directing me to report to C. G., of the First Division, for assignment to duty, I was commanding the regiment in battle.

At about this time three cavalry troopers reported to the Twenty-sixth Infantry. They said they came from towns where they had been on military police duty. They stated that they had heard from a man in a hospital that the First Division was having a lot of fighting and so they had gone A. W. O. L. to join it. They were attached to one of the companies, and a letter was sent through regular channels saying that they were excellent men and we wanted their transfer to a combatant branch of the service. We phrased it this way inorder to tease one of our higher command who belonged to the cavalry. A long while later, as I recall, an answer came back directing me to send the men back to their outfit, but they were all either killed or wounded at that time.

After the division was relieved from the Argonne it went into rest billets near the town of Ligny, there to rest and receive replacements before returning into the same battle. Advantage was taken of this brief period of rest to give leave to some of the enlisted personnel and officers. This was the first leave most of them had had since they had been in France. Captain Shipley Thomas took the men under his command to their area. He described to me on his return how on the way down all the men would talk about was: "Do you remember how we got that machine-gun nest? That was where McPherson got his." "Do you remember how Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Dobbs got those seventy-sevens by outflanking and surprising them?"

By the time they had been at the Y. M. C. A. Leave Area twenty-four hours they had forgotten all this. For seven days they had a fine time and their point of view changed entirely. As the train carried them north through France, when they stopped at a station they would lean out of the windows and inveigle some unsuspecting M. P. close to the train. They would ask him with much earnestness what it was like at the front, explaining to him meanwhile that they were members of the Arkansas Balloon Corps, and when he got near enough throw soda-water bottles at his head. Later an indignant epistle reached me demanding an explanation and directing "an investigation to fix the responsibility." A commanding officer should know a great many things unofficially, and in this case my knowledge was all of an unofficial nature, so I was able with a clear conscience to indorse it back with the suggestion that they investigate some other unit.

Captain J. B. Card, Captain Richards, and some other of the officers were given leave. They started immediately for Nice. While they were traveling down we received orders that we were to go back into the battle, sowires were awaiting them when they got off the train to report back to their units immediately. They made a good connection and spent only three hours at Nice. They reported back smiling and thought it was a good joke on themselves.

General C. P. Summerall had been promoted to the command of a corps and General Frank Parker given command of the division. General Parker was also one of the First Division's own officers. Before getting the division he had in turn commanded the Eighteenth Infantry and the First Brigade. He had a fine theory for soldiering. Summarized briefly, it was that the way to handle troops was to explain to them, in so far as possible, all that was to take place and the importance of the actions of each individual man. He had all his officers out with the men as much as possible. He had them all emphasize to the private the importance of his individual intelligent action. This is a fine creed for a commanding officer, as it helps to give him the confidence of his men. Obedience is absolutely necessaryin a soldier, but unintelligent obedience is not nearly as valuable as intelligent obedience given with confidence in the man who issues the order. It is intelligent comprehension of the aims of an order that lends most to its proper execution.

THE LAST BATTLE

"The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,One blow on the forehead will finish the fight."Holmes.

"The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,One blow on the forehead will finish the fight."

Holmes.

HARDLYhad the new replacements, some 1800 in all, learned to what company they belonged, when our definite orders reached us. The trucks arrived and we rattled off toward the front. We detrucked and bivouacked for a couple of days in a big wood while our supply trains came up. The weather, fortunately, was crisp and cool and bivouacking was really pleasant. What our mission was we did not know, but as we were to be in General Summerall's corps we were sure there would be plenty of fighting to go around.

General Summerall himself came and spoke to each of the infantry regiments. The regiment was formed in a three-sided square and he spoke from the blank side.

Almost immediately our orders arrived to move up. As usual we moved at night. The weather repented of its gentleness and cold heavy rain started. The roads were gone, the nights black, the columns splashed through mud with truck trains, with supplies for the troops ahead of us, crisscrossing and jamming by us. We passed the barren zone that had been No Man's Land for four years and was now again France.

Early in the morning in a heavy mist we reached another patch of woods just in rear of where the line was. Here we gained contact with the Second Division that was ahead of us. They attacked the same day and again we received orders to follow them. On this night the maps played us a trick, for a road well marked turned out to be a little wood trail. All night long we moved down it single file to get forward a bare seven kilometers. A wood trail in the rain is bad enough for the first man that moves over it, but it is almostimpassable for the three thousandth man when his turn comes. We got through, however, and by morning the regiment was in place. The road was clogged with a stream of transports of all kinds—trucks, wagon trains, tanks, and tractors, double banked and stuck. Occasionally, passing by them on foot, you would hear some general's aide spluttering in his limousine at the delay and wet.

Through this our supply train was brought forward by Captains Scott and Card and Lieutenant Cook with the uncanny ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible which had stood us in good stead many times. Indeed, the train beat the infantry and when we arrived, we found them there banked beside the road, with the kitchens smoking, and the food spreading a comforting aroma through the rain-rotted woods. Orders were received to march to Landreville. We gave the men hot chow and put the column in motion as soon as they had finished. The sun came out and dried us off and we felt more cheerful.

Still following in the wake of the victoriousSecond Division, we passed through the desolate, war-battered little town of Landreville. There, to my intense astonishment, I suddenly came on my brother, Kermit, and my brother-in-law, Richard Derby, who was chief surgeon of the Second Division. My brother Kermit had transferred to the American army from the British, had finished his course at an artillery school, and was now reporting to the First Division for duty. Seeing them so unexpectedly was one of the most delightful surprises.

We went into position at Landreville and sent out patrols, which immediately gained contact with the marines in our front, who were preparing to attack next day.

That night my brother and I sat in a ruined shed, regimental headquarters, surrounded by dead Germans and Americans, and talked over all kinds of family affairs.

Again the following night, as the Second Division's attack had been successful, we moved forward. Again it rained. Next morning we were bivouacked in the Bois de la Folie,but before evening were on the march again to another position. By the time we had reached this position, orders came to move forward again and we went into position in woods just south of Beaumont. Here the Colonel of the Ninth Infantry and I had headquarters together in an old farmhouse that had been used by the Germans as a prisoners' cage. It was surrounded by wire and filthy beyond description.

Here we got orders that we were to take over from the division on the left of the Second Division and attack in the morning. By this time the troops had marched practically five nights in succession and also two of the days. Speaking of this, there is a military phrase which has always irritated me. It appears in all accounts of big battles. It is, "At this point fresh troops were thrown into action." There is no such thing as "throwing fresh troops" into action. By the time the troops get into action they have marched night after night and are thoroughly tired.

The correct phrase should be, "troopsthat have suffered no casualties." For example, that night my three majors, Legge, Frazier, and Youell, all of them young men not more than twenty-eight years old, came in to get their orders for the attack. We all sat down on wooden benches in the cellar. Something happened which made it necessary for me to change part of my orders. Making the changes did not take more than five minutes in all. By the time I was through, all three of them had fallen asleep where they sat.

After receiving the orders, I got in touch with the Second Division, and I want to say that when the next war comes I hope my side partners will be of the same type. Colonel Robert Van Horn, an old friend of mine, was commanding the Twenty-third Infantry, which was to be on the right flank. I was to attack with two battalions in line and one in support, my right flank on Beaumont, my left following a road that led north to Mouzon. Together Van Horn and I worked out our plans and arranged for the connections we wished to make. He had been fighting thenfor a number of days, but was just as keen to continue as a schoolboy in a game of football.

That night again sunny France justified her reputation and for the fifth day in succession it rained. The troops moved forward and with the easy precision of veterans found their positions, got their direction, and checked in as in place at the moment of attack.

At 5.35 in a heavy mist they went over the top. The Hun had, by this time, lost all his fight and we advanced for seven or eight kilometers to our objectives, Mouzon and Ville Montry. By 6.00 in the evening the sector was cleared, the troops established on the objectives, and the advanced elements fighting in Mouzon.

Two of the German prisoners who were brought back early this day, an officer and his orderly, were nothing more than boys. They said they had been retreating for days and that they were so tired that they had not woke up until some of the Americans had prodded them with a bayonet.

It was in this attack that, among others,one of the medical officers, Lieutenant Skillirs, was killed. Like most of our medical officers, he followed his work with absolute disregard for his personal safety. He was hit by a shell toward the end of the attack while crossing the shelled area to help some wounded.

At 8 o'clock we received word that we were to withdraw from the sector we had taken and march into a position from which we should attack Sedan next morning. The Seventy-seventh Division was to extend its right and occupy the sector we were leaving. Word was sent to the majors to collect their commands and assemble them at a given point. All honor again to our supply company. They were there close in the rear of us and worked forward food to the men. At this time, with the men as tired as they were, it was of vital importance.

I received my detailed orders from General F. C. Marshall at a little half-burned farm.

By 8 o'clock the officers and men, who had marched and fought without stopping for twenty-four hours, were again assembledand moving west on the Beaumont-Stornay road. All night long the men plowed like mud-caked specters through the dark, some staggering as they walked. Once we had to move single file through our artillery, which was to follow in our rear. Often we had to take detours, as the Germans had mined the road. At one place a bridge over a stream was gone and the whole division had to cross over single file. Everyone had reached the last stages of exhaustion. Captain Dye, a corking good officer, fainted on the march, lay unconscious in the mud for an hour, came to, and joined his company before the morning attack. Major Frazier, while riding at the head of his battalion, fell asleep on his horse and rolled off.

As I rode up and down the column I watched the men. Most of them were so tired that they said but little. Occasionally, however, I would run on to some of the old men, laughing and joking as usual. I remember hearing a sergeant, who was closing the rear of one platoon, say, "Ooh, la, la!"

"What is it, sergeant, aren't you getting enough exercise?" I said to him.

"Exercise, is it, sir? It's not the exercise I'm worried with, but I do be afraid that them Germans are better runners than we are! Faith, to get them is like trying to catch a flea under your thumb."

Another time I passed an old sergeant called Johnson, at one of the five-minute rests.

"Sir," asked Johnson, "when do we hit 'em?"

"I'm not sure, sergeant," I said, "but I think about a kilometer and a half from here."

"That's good," Johnson replied. "If we can once get them and do 'em up proper they will let us have a rest."

Johnson voiced there the sentiments of the rank and file. They had been set a task and it never entered into their calculations that they could not do the task. They wanted to do it, do it well, and then have their rest.

In the morning we passed through a Frenchunit at Omicourt and started our attack. By afternoon we were on the heights overlooking Sedan, where word reached us to halt our attack. Shortly after we were told to withdraw, turning over to the French. We found later that it was considered wise that the French should take Sedan on account of the large sentimental value attached to it because of the German victory there in the war of 1870.

I waited in the sector until the troops had checked back, and then followed them to Chemery, where we were to spend the night. When I arrived I found the three battalion commanders sleeping in the stalls of a stable. As I came in one sat up and said: "Sir, I never knew until this minute what a lucky animal a horse is."

A characteristic incident of the new spirit occurred in this attack. Lieutenant Leck of E Company was assigned the task of occupying the town of Villemontry with a platoon. After severe hand-to-hand fighting on the streets he succeeded. The rapidity ofthe attack prevented the Germans from carrying off some French girls with them. The town was under heavy fire and the runner who was sent with the message directing the withdrawal and the march on Sedan was killed before he reached them. After the relieving unit arrived a message was sent to Leck that his regiment had withdrawn. He replied that the First Division never gave up conquered ground and he would hold the town until he received word from his proper commander.

The next day we moved to the south and east. The plan of the higher command, I have been informed, was to throw the First, Second, Thirty-second, and Forty-second Divisions across the Meuse in an attack on Metz, to assign no objectives but to let the rivalry in the divisions determine the depth of the advance.

All through the last ten days vague rumors had been reaching us concerning a proposed armistice. None of us really believed there was anything in them. This was largely on account of the fact that during the year anda half we had grown so accustomed to war that we could not imagine peace. Besides, we felt that terms that would be in any way acceptable to us would not be even given a hearing by the Germans. We felt also that we had them on the run and we wanted to go in and finish them. As a matter of fact, we didn't give much thought to it anyhow. We had almost as much as we could do finishing the job we had in hand.

On the march one day I heard one man discussing with the other members of his squad. He finished his remarks by saying, "I hope those damned politicians don't spoil this perfectly good victory we are winning."

As we were moving back a day later an engineer officer rode up to me from the rear and told me he had just come from Second Division headquarters, where they had announced that the armistice had been signed and all hostilities were to cease at 11 o'clock that morning. I sent back word to the men. It was announced up and down the column and a few scattering cheers were all thatgreeted it. I don't think it really got through their heads what had happened. I know it had not got through mine.

That night we stopped in the Bois de la Folie, and for the first time the men began to realize what had happened. Fires were lit all over. Around them men were gathered, singing songs and telling stories. It was very picturesque: the battered woods, the flaming fires, and the brown, mud-caked soldiers. The contrast was doubly great, as until that time no fires were lighted by the troops when anywhere near the front lines. German airplanes always came over and as the men expressed it, "laid eggs wherever they saw a light."

The first thing that really brought it home to me personally was when a little military chauffeur came up through the dark and said, "Colonel, Mrs. Roosevelt is waiting in the car at the corner."

I knew that no women had been anywhere near the front the day before. I realized that this really meant that the war was over.The car came up and skidded around in the deep mud. Mrs. Roosevelt was there in a pair of rubber boots. She had somehow managed to come because she wished to say good-by to me and return to our children in the United States now that the fighting was over. I went back with her some ten kilometers to a tent where some Y. M. C. A. men were giving out chocolates, crackers, etc.

All the way back through the night the sky was lit by the fires of the men. On every side rockets were going up, like a Fourth of July celebration. Gas signals and barrage signals flashed over the tree tops. The whole thing seemed hardly possible.

Although we had been there in France only a year and a half, it seemed as if the war had lasted interminably. It seemed as if it always had been and always would be with us. All our plans had been based on an indefinite continuation. I had been rather an optimist, and yet I did not consider the possibility of a cessation of hostilities before the following autumn. Much of the quaint philosophy ofthe French had sunk into our hearts and insensibly became a part of us—the philosophy which had its creed in the expressionC'est la guerre. To them and to usC'est la guerrehad much the significance of "All in the day's work." Like them, we treatedaprès la guerreas something in the nature of "castles in Spain."

So the war finished, so our part in the fighting came to an end; a page of the world's history was turned and we moved south to Verdun to prepare for our march into conquered Germany.

UP THE MOSELLE AND INTO CONQUERED GERMANY

"Judex ergo cum sedebitQuidquid latet, apparebitNil, inultum remanebit."Celano.

"Judex ergo cum sedebitQuidquid latet, apparebitNil, inultum remanebit."

Celano.

THEThird Army, which was to march into Germany as the army of occupation, was all in place on the 15th of November. My regiment was bivouacked in what had once been a wood, northeast of shell-shattered Verdun. The bleakest of bleak north winds whistled over the hilltops, whirling the gray dust in clouds. The men huddled around fires or burrowed into cracks in the hillside. Here we prepared as well as we could for our move forward.

Before dawn on the 17th of November, the infantry advanced in two parallel columns. By sunrise we were over the German lines andthe brown columns were winding down the white, dusty roads through villages long beaten out of the semblance of human habitation by the shells. Gazing back down the column, the thought that always struck uppermost was the realization of strength. The infantry column moves slowly, but the latent power in the close mass of marching men is very impressive. The only thing I know which compares with it in suggestion of power is a line of great gray dreadnaughts lunging across the water.

At one village a young French soldier, who had been riding on a bicycle by our column, stopped sadly before three crumbling walls. It was all that was left of his home. His father, the mayor of the village, had lived there. His mother had died in Germany and he did not know what had become of his father.

By night we were out of the uninhabited parts and were reaching the freed French villages. Here we found starving men, women, and children whom we helped out from our none-too-plentiful rations. These people were pathetic. They seemed to have lost thepower to rejoice. They looked at us from their doors with lackluster eyes and apparent indifference. One woman told me that the Germans as they left her house had told her they would be back soon. I asked her if she believed it, and she simply shrugged her shoulders.

Next morning we were on the march again. All day long, past our advancing columns, streamed the prisoners whom the Germans had been working in the coal mines. They were French, Italian, Russian, and Rumanian, desperately emaciated for the most part and still wearing their old uniforms. Sometimes they dragged behind them little carts containing the possessions of two or three of them. Often I stopped them and questioned them, but whether they were French or not they seemed to have one idea, and one only—to put as many miles between them and Germany as possible.

We had sent back to where our baggage was stored while we were at Verdun and brought up our colors and our band. Now we putthem at the head of the column and went forward with band playing and colors flying.

The farther we got from where the front line had been, the better was the condition of the inhabitants. Now we began to see the first signs of rejoicing. News would reach the authorities in villages that we were coming some time before we arrived. They would throw arches of flowers over the streets through which we marched. Groups of little girls would run by the side of the column, giving bouquets to the men. Cheering crowds would gather on the sides of the road.

The doughboy had a beautiful time. The doughboy loves marching to music, with flags flying and the populace cheering. He is very human and is fond of showing off. For some reason or other there is a current belief in this country that the average American does not like parades, decorations, etc. This is just bosh. The average American is just as keen for such things as anyone else. He likes to put on a pretty ribbon and come home andbe admired by the young ladies. I know I like to put on my decorations for my wife.

In every little town where we spent the night a ceremony of some sort took place. Generally the townspeople made us an American flag and presented it to us. I have some of these flags stowed away at this moment. They were made with the help of old dictionaries. Sometimes these dictionaries were very old and the American flag of one hundred years ago would be the one copied. At one village we were presented with a flag with fifty stars. The donor explained that he had been in the United States and knew we had forty-eight and that the two extra were for Alsace and Lorraine.

Once, while we were at mess in the evening, with great ceremony it was announced that a committee of young ladies desired to wait on me. I bowed to the girdle and said, "Will they come in?" They trooped in, peasant girls from fourteen to twenty years old, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and headed by the mayor's daughter. Theyhad a flag with them. First, one of them made an elaborate speech, in which we were hailed as the sons of Lafayette and George Washington, a slight historical inaccuracy. Then I replied, calling upon the names of Joan of Arc, Henry of Navarre, and others, and then the spokeslady, to the intense delight of my staff, stepped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. At another time a large, corpulent, much-bewhiskered mayor endeavored to enact the same ceremony, but forewarned is forearmed, and I evaded him.

In a short time we came to the Duchy of Luxembourg and marched over the border. Everywhere here also we were met with open arms. The streets were jammed as we marched through the villages. All the world and his wife were there and greeted us as "Comrades glorious" and "Victors."

We sent forward, as was customary, a detail of officers to make sure that billeting accommodations were forthcoming and that everything would be as comfortable as possible for the men. When I arrived, slightly in advanceof the troops, the first thing I saw was a procession of townfolk approaching. At its head was a band which might, for all the world, have come out of the comic opera. Following the band were pompous gentlemen in frock coats and top hats, carrying bouquets of gorgeous flowers done up with ribbons, and making up the body of the procession were people of every age, both sexes, and every grade in society. I realized they were heading for me, and with great dignity descended from the dinky little side car in which I had been traveling. Major Legge and Lieutenant Ridgely here joined me and explained that a ceremony of welcome was to take place, and I was to represent the United States! We three lined up solemnly while the Luxembourgers formed a semicircle around us. The ceremony was, first, the presentation speech; second, the keys of the city and armfuls of bouquets, and, third, a cheer for America; and then the band played. We none of us knew the Luxembourg national anthem, but felt that this must be it, so we stood at attention with great solemnity and salutedwhile it was sounding. When it was finished the mayor started it off again with a cheer for France and the same supposedly national anthem. Again we stood at attention. We went through this same ceremony for six of the Allies, when fortunately the troops came up and terminated it. Later I found that the tune they played and to which we had been rendering the formal compliment was the air of a popular song. The warm welcome would have impressed me more had I not been certain it had been accorded equally to the Germans when they marched through.

Meanwhile the Eighteenth Infantry of our division had passed on our left flank through the city of Luxembourg. That day I ran down with a couple of officers to watch them parade. It was the first time I had ever been in Luxembourg. The city is very picturesque. It is built on the side of a rocky gorge, and on one jutting pinnacle of rock are the remains of the feudal castle where a medieval emperor of Germany was born. The fête amused me very much. I felt as if I were living in GeorgeBarr McCutcheon'sGraustark. The Luxembourg army was drawn up to receive our troops, all the men being present, 150 sum total. What they lacked in numbers they made up in gorgeousness. Never have I seen such beautiful uniforms, so many colors, so much gold lace, and such absurdly antiquated rifles. The populace had a beautiful time. They are mercantile by temperament. They realized that a reign of plenty was coming; that the American goose that lays the golden eggs would be in their midst and that money would flow as the changeless current of their own Moselle River.

A couple of days' march farther and we reached the banks of the Moselle. Here we spent four or five days while the troops cleaned up and rested in three small towns. The regimental band played for different units every day. Everything moved smoothly. The inhabitants were gentle and kindly. Indeed, they were so effective in their kindness that one of the second battalion headquarters cooks, called "Chops," came to grief. First, he drankall of their wine he could get, then, in an inspired spirit of generosity, cooked and turned over to his new friends the turkey which, with much labor, had been secured for the officers' Thanksgiving dinner. His generosity was sadly misunderstood by his commanding officer, for he was returned to duty with the mule train from which he had come.

On the fifth of December we resumed the march and crossed the Moselle into conquered Germany. From this time on a new element was added to the chances of campaigning. Our maps were perfectly impossible. You never could tell where bridges were and where there were simply ferries. Once we ran our column directly into a pocket. The map showed what looked like a bridge. We were not allowed to scout ahead, and the interpreter's questions seemed to confirm its existence. When we got there we found a ferry that accommodated only sixteen men at a time and we had to double on our tracks. On these maps, also, the roads all looked good. The first day's march in Germany we nearly lost the supply train on account of this, as a seemingly good highway ended in a marsh.

i_271

THE RHINE AT COBLENZDrawn by Captain Ernest Peixotto, A. E. F.

That night we billeted for the first time in German territory. Regimental headquarters were in the country house of a German officer. On the news of our advance he had fled farther north, but, with the characteristic affectation of his class, telephoned, on our arrival, saying he regretted that he would not be there to receive us and hoped that we would be comfortable. Next morning he telephoned again, sending a message to the effect that if any of his servants had not done everything for our comfort would we please report the matter to him immediately in order that he might punish the offender.

All the next day we moved up the banks of the winding Moselle through Treves, where relics of the old Roman buildings frowned down on us as we passed. At night we stopped in another German house, from which the German officer had not fled. He was a lieutenant colonel and had waited to receive us, prepared to be butler or anything we demanded.

A real indication of the character of the German soldier was given by the terror of the women at our approach. It was clear that they expected any outrage. On account of this, on arriving in each town, when I would call the burgomaster to give him the instructions concerning the behavior of the townspeople, I would finish up by directing him to announce to all women and children that they need have no fear concerning the actions of any American soldier, that we were Americans, not Germans. I had my interpreter see that it was given out in this form.

Day after day we followed the river or made short cuts inland. As we marched along, on hilltops on either side, silhouetted against the sky, austere and dignified, were the crumbling brown-rock towers of medieval castles. These castles were destroyed more than two centuries before by Louis XIV as he marched by the same route. On either side of the river the slopes rose abruptly. They were covered with vineyards, apparently growing from the brown shale. Once, when we passed throughthe city of Berncastle, in the early morning, when the mist choked the valley, I looked up and saw on the peak that overhung the town, touched by the morning sun, the old keep framed in the white mist like a cameo set in mother-of-pearl. Time and again some Hun farmer would stop me and take me through a cow-shed to see the marble remains of some Roman bath or villa, the name of whose owner had long since vanished in the mists of time.

An odd incident of this march occurred when Lieutenant Barrett was ordered by me to go and instruct a German soldier we were passing concerning certain of our regulations. When Barrett reported back, he told me the man had come from his own home town in Indiana.

One thing that struck us all as we left France and reached Germany was the number of children. In France children are rare. Each community you passed you felt was composed of grown people. In Germany the streets were full of them—healthy-looking little rascals, pink-cheeked and well-nourished, wearing diminutivegray-blue uniforms like those of the German soldier. Little machine gunners, the men used to call them, for they looked like so many small replicas of those men we had been killing and who had killed us. Immediately upon the proclamation going out that the children would be in no way molested, these little rascals swarmed over everything. Nothing could satisfy their curiosity.

After weaving our way up the river valley and over the hills, one early December morning we found ourselves winding down from the surrounding hills toward the Rhine. As we swung around a rocky corner, the whole panorama lay before us—the gables and steeples of the town of Boppard with, as a background, the broad, undisturbed silver Rhine. On we wound down the rocky slope into the city, the flag flying at the head of the column. That night I formed the entire regiment in line on the terraced water front facing the river and, with the band playingThe Star-Spangled Banner, stood retreat.

We waited here a day and then marcheddown the river to Coblenz. On this march we passed through one village, with old gates, little jutting houses carved and painted in bright colors, unchanged sixteenth-century Europe. Next was another village, factory towers smoking, great brick buildings filled with machinery, plain little board houses for the workmen, the epitome of modernism.

The night of December 12th we billeted at Coblenz. Next morning, at seven o'clock, the First Division in two columns crossed the Rhine, the first of the American troops. As the head of the column reached the center of the bridge and I looked at massive Ehrenbreitstein and up and down the historic river, I felt this truly marked the end of an era.

Two days more brought us to the end of the bridgehead, where we were to take up our position. Division headquarters were in quite a large town called Montabaur, a name supposed to have been brought back with the early crusaders,i. e., Mount Tabor. Two castles overlooked the town, one in ruins, the other still used as an administrative buildingby the town authorities. The regiment was scattered through the surrounding small country villages.

Quarters for the men were good in comparison with what they had been used to. We were able to get washing facilities, food came up regularly, and now, for the first time, proper equipment. The men really enjoyed themselves for the first week or so. We had no trouble with fraternization. Our men had seen too many of their friends and relations killed to care to have anything to do with their late enemies. Like true Americans, they played with the children and flirted with the women whenever opportunity offered, but I never remember seeing any attempt to become familiar with the men.

Now that the work of fighting was over, uppermost in everyone's mind was the thought, "When do we get home?" The minuteman wanted to go back to ordinary life and his family. Time and again when I first returned to this country people would ask me what I thought the soldiers thought of this or thatpublic question. I always replied truthfully that the men were so busy thinking about what a good place the United States was, how much better in their opinion than any of the European countries they had been to, that all they were interested in was, when will that transport leave.

In January I was ordered to Paris on sick leave. Shortly after, I sailed for home on theMauretaniaand saw the mass of New York lift on the horizon, where my three children, who had practically forgotten me, were waiting. So ends the active participation of an average American with average Americans in the war.

AFTERWARDS

Back to IndexNext