the first time with the thrill
that they had trained so long and travelled so far to experience.

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

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

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

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

Our men were eager to ask questions and the French were ever ready to
respond. They first told us about the difference in the sound of shells.
Now that one that started with a bark in back of us and whined over our
heads is a _depart_. It is an Allied shell on its way to the Germans.
Now, this one, that whines over first and ends with a dist