y, there was much excitement among us on
their arrival. Nothing else was thought of for the moment except the news
from home.

The next few days were uneventful. Toward evening on the thirteenth of
September, I was scouting on our left flank. The German heavy guns had
been keeping up a steady searching fire all day, but little damage had
been done.

I had got so accustomed to the roar of the explosions that they did not
bother me very much. After a while a man gets so used to the sound of a
shrieking shell in the air that he can tell by instinct when one is coming
his way in time to throw himself flat on the ground. I had not yet reached
this stage of proficiency. A shell did come my way. How close it came I
will never know, because all of a sudden I felt as though my head were
bursting. I seemed to be tumbling end over end and being torn to pieces.
My ear drums rang and pained excruciatingly. I thought to myself "I am
dying," and I wondered how I kept feeling a sort of consciousness although
I must be already torn to bits.

Then I found myself sitting up on the ground with a man from my patrol
supporting my head.

Now, this is the strange thing. I was instantly and absolutely oblivious
when the shell exploded. All the sensations I have described came when I
was recovering consciousness. Surgeons have told me since then that they
were exactly what the shell caused when it exploded, but that my brain did
not register them until my senses returned. My clothes were scorched and
even my hair was singed. I do not know why I was not killed, but in a few
hours I was ready for duty once more. The man who picked me up said that
the shell had burst some little distance overhead. If it had struck the
ground close to me, it would doubtless have sent me "west."

The game had now been turned about. We were the pursuers. Most of the
fighting was between the enemy's rear guard and our contact patrols--until
we reached the Aisne. The Huns crossed the river, but they blew up the
bridges behind them. The last of the retreating troops were scarcely
across before the detonators were set off.

We were held up for a while on the Aisne while our engineers constructed
pontoon bridges. The Germans had the range, and they almost wiped out our
entire battalion of engineers before our troops could cross.

I saw a working raft swing out into the river with about twelve men on it.
A single burst of shrapnel exploded in their midst and there wa