inhabitants left to give us food and drinks as we had had before at every resting place, which helped us greatly. Along the roadside lots of trees had been smashed by shell fire, and there were hundreds of graves with rough crosses or little flags to mark them, and every now and then we passed a broken auto or a dead horse lying in the gutter.

At the end of the fifth day we got our first sample of war—quite suddenly, without any warning, as we didn't know we were near the firing line. We had just entered a devastated village when there came a shrill whistling noise like when white hot iron is plunged into cold water, then a terrific bang as a shell burst about thirty yards in front of our columns, making a hole in the road about five feet deep and ten in diameter, and sending a hail of shrapnel in all directions. One big splinter hit a man in the second rank and took his head off—I think he was a Norwegian; anyway, that was our first casualty. No one else was injured.

Our boys took their baptism of fire pretty coolly, though most of us jumped at the bang and ducked involuntarily to dodge the shrapnel, which, by the way, isn't very dangerous at more than thirty yards, though it does a lot of harm at shorter range. Personally, I wasn't as scared as I expected, and most of the others said the same. At first, one is too interested to be frightened, and by the time the novelty has worn off one has gotten fairly used to it all—at least that seemed to be our general opinion.

There were no more shells after that one, and we continued our march till nightfall, when we camped in an abandoned village. Next morning there were 100 big auto trucks ready to take us to a point about forty miles along the lines, and we clambered aboard them and set off at a good speed—all but twenty unlucky lads, who were left to pad the hoof as a guard for our mules and baggage. My pal, William Thaw, was among the number; he marched for thirteen hours practically without a stop, and when he reached our camp he lay right down in the mud by the roadside and went straight off to sleep, though it was raining like sixty and he was drenched to the skin. But he was all right again in the morning, though it was a man's job to wake him up.

Next day we set off before dawn, having received orders to take our place in the trenches about eight miles away. It soon got light, and after marching about half an hour we were unlucky enough to be seen by a German aeroplane which signaled us to their batteries. The first shell burst near, the second nearer, the third right among us, killing nearly a dozen old-timers; and we were forced to break ranks and take cover until nightfall, as they'd got the range and it would have been suicide to try and go on. Pretty good shooting that at five or six miles' distance!

The French talk a lot about their artillery, but, believe me, the Dutchies are mighty fine gunners, especially with their cannon—even the very biggest.

No Chance to Rest.

Why, one day when my company was having its usual weekly rest from the trenches, there were a couple of hundred of us bunking in a big barn fully eight miles behind our lines. About three in the afternoon along came a German aeroplane, and half an hour later they dropped a couple of shells between the barn and a church some thirty yards farther back, just by way of showing what they could do. We thought that was all, and settled down comfortably for the night; but not a bit of it! At ten o'clock sharp a shell dropped plump onto the barn itself and killed five or six and wounded a dozen more, none of them Americans. We got out on the jump, though of course it was raining; and we were wise, for in the next half hour they hit the barn eleven times without a single miss, and at ten-thirty there weren't any big enough bits of it left to make matches of. The barn was perhaps thirty yards long by fifteen wide, but remember they were firing at a range of ten miles or so and in pitch darkness. Of course, they had got their guns trained right in the afternoon and just waited till night to give us a pleasant surprise. I did hear those were Austrian mortars, not German; anyway, they were good enough for us, I can tell you.

But to go back to my story: We broke ranks and fled to cover, and remained in hiding all that day near a ruined farm with shells falling all about, though they didn't do much damage. But our old-timers didn't like it one little bit. They had not been used to that kind of thing in Africa, and then the Germans and Austrians didn't at all fancy the idea of being fired upon by their own people. In our company all of the Sergeants and most of the other non-coms were Austrian—not that they turned out later to be any the worse fighters for that. There was one Sergeant named Wiedmann who fought like a lion; he was the bravest man in the regiment. Poor chap, I've just heard he was killed the other day by a hand grenade, and I'm sorry. He was a real white man if ever I knew one. Our Lieutenant was a German named Bloch, and only the Captain was a Frenchman. But all this mixture of races led to some rather curious results, as the following story will show:

"The Corsican Brothers."

Among the recruits who joined us at Paris there were two young fellows from Corsica—the Corsican brothers, we called them, as they always stuck together—who said they belonged to the Corsican militia, but preferred to volunteer, as they wanted to see some fighting right away. Besides French, they spoke English fluently, and used to jabber away together in some local patois, but they were both very smart soldiers and were soon promoted Corporals and got along fine. Every one liked them, and they stood very well with the officers as well. After we had been in the trenches about ten days these two chaps disappeared one wet night and left behind a note for the Colonel, which I was lucky enough to see. It ran something like this:

Most Honored Sir:

Though we have spent a most agreeable time in your regiment—of which we have a good opinion, although the discipline is sometimes rather more lax than we are accustomed to—we feel that the moment has come for us to join our friends, which we were unable to do at the mobilization, when we naturally preferred the Foreign Legion to a concentration camp.

We will give a good account of you to our friends and hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again before long.

   Otto X——
Ober-Lieutenant, Potsdam Guards.
  Hermann Y——
Lieutenant, Potsdam Guards.

Wouldn't that fease you? The Colonel nearly blew up.

Well, at nightfall we resumed our march by separate companies. Our Captain didn't know the country, so of course we got lost. It was raining heavily, and the mud was frequently knee deep. Add to that incessant tumbles into numberless shell holes full of water, and you will realize that we were a pretty sad procession that finally at three A. M. scrambled into the stinking ditch where we were to spend the greater part of the next three months.

For three or four days we had nothing to do but dodge the shrapnel and try and keep warm, as the enemy maintained a constant artillery fire—with a regular interval for luncheon—starting about six A. M. and stopping toward five P. M.; and they got the range. I tell you, one lies pretty flat when there's any shrapnel about. Some of the English boys were killed the second day, but we Americans have been fine and lucky—only one killed the whole time, though we have had some very narrow shaves. For instance, Thaw had his bayonet knocked off his rifle by a "sniper" while on sentry-go, and another boy