shot was short
or over. It's kinder funny to sit back here in quiet and listen in the
war, isn't it?" I agreed it was weird and it was.

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

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

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

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

Our army knew nothing but confidence. If there was other than optimism
to be derived from the current events, then our army was inclined to
consider such a resul