By noon of the next day Battery C’s guns had all been securely emplaced. O. D. wrote three letters in the morning, all of which centered around Jimmy McGee and the front. In his letter to Mary he said, in part:

You’ll love Jimmy, he’s so big and kind. If he ever got all cleaned and dressed he’d sure be handsome, but the boys don’t have time for that kind of life up here.

Mary, Jimmy never gets any letters, except from a few boys that work where he used to. His folks are all dead. I told him that you would write to him. He is sending you a German officer’s helmet that he took from a German at Chateau-Thierry. You see, Jimmy has been at the front for a long time.

I am at the front with him now. But, somehow, I don’t feel like I thought I would. It doesn’t seem so terribly different from a place that we stopped at about twenty miles from here. Of course the guns make a lot of noise when they go off and there’s all kinds of mysterious lights at night that make you think of ghosts at work. But the airplanes and bombs are what scare me most....

Before supper was served on the afternoon of September 11th the guns of Jimmy McGee’s regiment had registered on their targets and everything was in readiness to participate in the greatest effort that the First American Army was destined to make on the fields of France.

That night there were no certain indications that the drive would start immediately. The ordinary precautions were taken. But they alone did not suggest to the men that something big was about to happen. Yet, in the blood of them all, a fever was present which brought its presentiments.

“O. D., I got a hunch. Nothin’ certain in this guerre, you know. But I’ve got a feelin’ in my fingers that we’re goin’ to use old Betsy to-night,” spoke Jimmy.

“Jimmy—Jimmy.” Neil was calling him.

“Oui. What’s up?”

“How do things look to you?” asked Neil, crawling in the little shelter tent.

“I was just sayin’ to O. D. that I’ve got a hunch—just like the one before the battle of Seicheprey—that somethin’ is goin’ to come off. Mighty damn quiet, though. But it’s always that way before a real racket.”

“What time have you got, O. D.?” asked Neil.

“Darn near midnight. Jimmy and I have been sittin’ around talking a good deal. What are you doing up?”

“I’m on guard to-night.”

The shrill blast of a pocket whistle interrupted him and caused the three of them to jump a little.

“Callin’ to the guns, boys,” whispered Jimmy. “I knew somethin’ was in the wind. Get ready, O. D.”

“I’ve got to beat it, then,” said Neil, getting out.

In a few seconds Jimmy and O. D. were running toward their gun-pit. Soon afterward the other members of the crew were at their stations.

Just as the executive officer was giving out the firing data the world seemed caught in the vortex of a terrible electrical storm. Up in front of Battery C’s position a barrage from the seventy-five’s crashed into life. Big guns away behind the position began to bay.

Jimmy got orders to fire. The darkness of night was lost in blinding flashes of yellow flames that came from the thundering guns. Shells whined and whistled on their way toward the German trenches and positions. O. D. rammed the shells home, wondering if the world was coming to an end. The roar of the pieces, the rattle of machine-guns, the earth that quivered beneath him and the skies that seemed to be blazing with varicolored fires assailed his ears, his eyes, and his soul with a violence that he had never dreamed of. He looked to Jimmy for confidence. Jimmy was working his sights and traversing the piece as if he were listening to a jazz victrola record. O. D. bit his lips. He knew that one of his real trials was at hand.

The din of battle became a unison of wild, barbaric music. Out where the doughboys were going over, under the barrages, rockets crawled against the livid heavens. O. D. thought of dragons and unearthly monsters as he watched these things.

The scream of a shell, more sinister than the rest, caused O. D.’s hair to stand up straight.

“That one’s comin’ in,” bawled out Jimmy.

Another shell whistled in the same fashion.

B—A—N—G!

The sound of an explosion new to the ears of O. D. throttled the vicinity of his piece. A human cry made itself heard above the angry roaring of the guns.

“Somebody got it—poor guy!” shouted Jimmy. O. D. nodded and kept on placing the shells on the tray and ramming them in the smoking breech.

For four hours the battle storm raged incessantly. During those hours Jimmy’s gun crew worked away with straining muscles. There was no mental or spiritual strain attached to their labor. They were hardened to the unnatural sounds and sights of modern fighting. But O. D., new to the things of big action, face to face with the relentless fury of war for the first time, had to contend with both the physical and spiritual conditions which presented themselves. He was naturally strong; but four hours of work, under stress of fighting, made his arms and back feel as if they were breaking. No man, however iron of will and nerves, can go through his first battle without some demoralization of his mental forces. O. D. was only an ordinary boy. Naturally he suffered his share of spiritual anguish in the trying moments of competition for the control of his soul powers before the onslaught of terrors that threatened to smash his nerve and courage.

When orders to cease firing came O. D. was tired and a bit wan. But he had found himself. That alone counted with him. A few moments later, when Jimmy asked him how he liked it, O. D. found himself answering:

“It kind of got me at first—especially when that wounded man cried out. But when I didn’t stop to think, and kept on working, I didn’t mind it so much.”

“That’s the stuff. Now you’ve heard all the noise that they can make in this war, so you’re done with that experience. The rest of the stuff is only incidental-like,” said Jimmy. “Course somebody’s got to get killed or wounded. There wouldn’t be no war if that didn’t happen. But it won’t be us. It’s always the other guy. Compree?”

“Oui,” answered O. D.

“Get yourself together, boys, we’re pullin’ right out. O. P.’s report that the Germans are hauling it fast. Hardly any resistance. Beaucoup prisoners comin’ in. Thousands, they say. The old doughboys are goin’ like hell,” shouted Neil, running up to O. D. and Jimmy.

“That’s the old pep. Come on, O. D., we’re off to another fight,” and Jimmy started on the run for the tent.

The first few sharp points of dawn were piercing the haze of early morning as Jimmy, O. D., and the rest of the outfit started across the decaying stretch of land southeast of wrecked Mouilly. For four long years the ground that the Yankees trampled underfoot had been the No Man’s Land between the German and French lines. There was no real road, just a winding succession of shell-holes and gaping craters, bordered on one side by............