“Long ’bout April second we passed through Toul and hit the American front. The First Division outfits was relieved there by us. Most of our gang got billeted ’round a placed called Boucq. I was at Corniéville before we went into positions. Our billets were the worst things a man could imagine. Dirty, cold, and hardly any bunks at all.
“We soon found out that we was goin’ to fight a different kind of guerre down there than we had been doin’. The country was so muddy and soft that you couldn’t dig in and make dug-outs. Everything was on the ground. Course my battery had to get the worse place of all—up in a swamp. If you got off the little duckboard walks you had to get a detail to pull you out of the mud. The positions that we had was on the Germans’ maps, as they had already got a gun belonging to the First Division, before we took the position over.
“Two days after we got our pieces layed on some Boche targets they began throwin’ ’em over at us. That was the first time we’d ever been under real shell-fire in the positions. It was a regular circus. Old Bill Conway was on gas guard at the time. They gave us a klaxon for a gas alarm, unless it’s possible to rig up some kind of a tin gong to heat on. Well, Bill, he was walkin’ post swingin’ the Ford klaxon ’round, just as uninterested in the guerre as if he had been walkin’ post in a safe Coast Artillery fort. He had been told to sound that klaxon in case of gas. A big boy whistled on the way. Sounds just like the whine of a dyin’ wildcat. Something terrible to listen to, believe me, till you get kind of fed up on the stuff.
“Bang—Bluey! That two-twenty—we call ’em barrack bags, they’re so damn big—landed ’bout thirty feet from our last latrine and sent fragments of itself and trees, with about a ton of dirt, in all directions. Old Conway, with his eighteen years of continued service, started cranking that klaxon for all he was worth as he ran toward a bunkhouse.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!
“The Heinies were puttin’ ’em over for fair and too damn close to be interestin’. Course everybody jerked on the old gas-mask. But Bill Conway was so excited and scared till he clean forgot all about his own mask—all he could do was sound that klaxon and shout, ‘Gas!’ The skipper came tearin’ out of his B. C. station, gas-mask and all. The first thing he saw was Conway without a mask. ‘Put your mask on, you boob, ’ain’t you got any sense? I’ll court martial you for disregardin’ orders.’ Conway drops the klaxon and pulls the mask over his bean and face toot sweet.
“Corporal Reynolds, who was gas non-com., comes up about that time and asks Bill what the devil he sounded the gas alarm for. Bill says, ‘We’re gettin’ gassed.’ Reynolds, of course, was expected to know gas from ordinary fresh air, bein’ as how he was the gas non-com., so he pulled his mask off and sniffed ’round considerable. ‘Hell afire,’ says he, ‘there ain’t no gas.’ Everybody took off their masks and the skipper gave Conway extra fatigue for causin’ such a disturbance.
“All durin’ the time that they was arguin’ ’bout the gas the old shells were sailing right over our heads and hittin’ pretty close. One guy got a splinter in the fat of his thigh and Deacon O’Tell’s underclothes were ripped off a line where he had ’em dryin’. But that was all the casualties we had that day. You see, the woods was mighty tall and strong there and they sorta shielded us from the fragments and hunks.
“Things rattled on that way every day. We used to get shelled every afternoon ’round three or four o’clock. Couple of the boys got it pretty soon and they carted ’em off to a hospital. Never seen or heard of ’em since.
“The monjayin’ was pas bon. Never got any sugar in the coffee, and as for milk—well, there wasn’t any ’round them diggin’s. O. D., that’s one thing that got my goat a long time. You read ’bout all this Hooverizin’ stuff. How the folks back home is doin’ without sugar—havin’ wheatless, meatless, fireless and all kind of days so the men at the front can get the best monjayin’ there is—and we was starvin’ a good many times. Course if we hadn’t been Americans we’d have kicked and raised an awful smell, but bein’ a bunch of Yankees and knowin’ what we was up against in this guerre, we just fooled ’em and kept on regardless. Now I ain’t sayin’ this so much for myself, cause I’m pretty hefty and can get along. But we had a bunch of little guys up there that weren’t more than a bunch of strings. Those kids used to stay up all night luggin’ ninety-five-pound shells—gettin’ wet most of the time—then dive into their cold bunks, cushay ’bout two hours and get up to monjay. What the hell do you think they’d get? Maybe a thin slice or two of bacon—hardtack most of the time, black coffee with no sugar, and that’s all. Fat breakfast for a fightin’ man. You can’t blame nobody for them things except the people back at the ports and in the S. O. S. who are supposed to get the eats up to us.
“That’s a rotten, damn shame, because we always got good eating back where I was—fresh meats—vegetables—butter—jam—milk in the coffee all the time,” interrupted O. D.
“Listen to that,” exploded Jimmy. “There you are—everybody for himself in this army. Those ginks back there ain’t worryin’ much ’bout us guys that’s fightin’ this guerre. ‘Send ’em up a carload of “corn-willy” and a train of hardtack—that’ll be enough to keep ’em goin’ another month or two,’ that’s what they say down in the S. O. S., I guess.
“Round about April tenth the Boches thought they’d give our lines a good feel, so they came over strong and sent gas barrages and high explosive mixed up with beaucoup shrapnel and other stuff, along with their doughboys. This happened up in the Bois Br?lé—which means burned woods in Frog lingo. Now you might think that our boys, bein’ a bit green at the guerre stuff, would have been sick to their stomachs, or somethin’ like that after gettin’ such rough treatment from the Boches, but it wasn’t that way at all. I believe that most of the doughboys was just itchin’ for a good battle, anyway. The way they waded into the Boches was big stuff. Banged ’em all over the lots. When the ammunition gave out the fellows started wallopin’ ’em with their fists and the butt-ends of rifles. You know Boches ain’t no good when it comes to fightin’ at close quarters. In fact, if you take ’em out of that close formation stuff that they pull when comin’ over—well, they ain’t worth a hurrah—so when the Yanks shoved their fists in the snouts it was finee toot sweet.
“The battlin’ kept up for about three or four days. Every time the Boches tried to get a footin’ in Appremont we’d throw ’em out again. Soon they got tired, seein’ how impossible it was to stay there, and went back to their trenches and dug-outs.
“The Boches stayed quiet until the night of April nineteenth, or rather first thing in the mornin’ of the twentieth. I was up in a position so close to the front-line trenches that you could throw hand grenades at a Yankee doughboy, if he was fool enough to stick his bean over the parapet. About ten men from each battery had been detailed to man a ninety-five-millimeter battery&mda............