“On to Berlin,” was the cry of the whole Yank army. And the boys were impatient of every delay that kept them from their goal. They all felt like the colored private from Alabama who was asked to join a French class: “No, I don’ want to study French. I want to study German.”

After the hisses had died down some one asked, “Why is it you want to study German rather than French?”

“I’se goin’ to Berlin.”

Then the hisses gave way to cheers.

It was that same spirit which caused Corporal Cole, of the Marines, to say: “The marines do not know such a word as ‘retreat.’” That was the spirit which brought the curt reply from Col. Whittlesey when the Huns asked his “Lost Battalion” to surrender.

The American army was a victorious army. It had never been defeated. It had faith in its ideals. Those ideals were neither selfish nor arrogant. It wore no boastful “Gott mit uns” on its belt. It desired only the opportunity of striking low that nation which dared to dictate terms to the Almighty as well as to men. It braved three thousand miles of submarine peril to meet such an enemy.

Even an invincible army has to breathe and eat and sleep. They can hold their breath long enough to adjust a gas mask, but the mask tells us that even in gas they must be enabled to breathe. In the heat of the chase when the Hun is the hare, they can forget for a time that they are hungry, but the field kitchen testifies to the fact that hunger undermines courage and that an efficient army must be a well-fed army.

To see men curled up in muddy shell-holes with the sky for canopy, peacefully sleeping, while cannon are booming on every side and shells whining overhead, is sufficient evidence that sleep is not a myth invented by the Gods of Rest.

While the spirit of the boys was willing to go right through to Berlin, their flesh asserted its weakness. Their first dash over the top was invincible, and we were told that in ten hours they swept forward to their goal sixty hours ahead of schedule. There they dug in and for four days held the line in the face of a murderous and desperate German fire.

During those four awful days I saw no sign of “yellow,” but everywhere relentless courage.

“Hello, Mr. Y-Man, don’t you want to see a fellow that has three holes through him and still going strong?”

“You don’t really mean it, do you? Show him to me. I want to look into the eyes of such a man.” They led me over to a bunch of soldiers who had just come out of the line and there in the center of an admiring crowd was my man, happy as a lark. His three wounds one in the left breast, one in the thigh, and a scalp wound had been dressed, and while these wounds had glorified him in the eyes of his comrades, he was ready to forget them.

Even though a hundred shells exploding near by miss you, and you become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers. If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back areas where you can forget the war and get a grip upon yourself again.

Holding the line in open warfare costs a heavy toll in human life, but here again our boys showed their invincible spirit. Not once did I see a Yankee that showed any eagerness to get away from the line. The mortally wounded accepted the sacrifice they had been called upon to make without bemoaning fate, and remained cheerful to the end. Of course when a man was “facing West” he longed for the loved faces and the heaven of home. We who had our own “little heaven” back in the homeland knew and instinctively read those sacred thoughts and prayers and gave just the hand-pressure of deep sympathy.

To have spoken of home at such a time would have been to tear the heart already breaking, with a deep anguish that would interfere with their possibility of recovery. So the cheery word of hope and faith was given, and any final message quietly taken and faithfully and sacredly fulfilled.

The wounded men whom we met coming out of the line who were not “facing West” were with one accord hopeful of speedy recovery, not that they might “save their own skin” and get back home alive, but that they might get back into the fight and help to put forever out of commission that devilish military machine that had threatened the democratic freedom of the world.

Then again there were the boys who had miraculously escaped being wounded, and after days in the very bowels of hell, which no pen can picture and no tongue recite, had been released from the line and were working their way back to the food kitchens, the water carts, and the rest of the camps. One such doughboy, I met near Montfaucon, about midway between the front line and an artillery ridge where our 75’s were coughing shells in rapid succession upon the entrenched foe. His water canteen had long been empty and the nourishment of his hard tack and “corn willie" forgotten. His lips were parched with thirst and bleeding from cracks, the result of long-continued gun fire. His body was wearied by the heavy strain, his cheeks were gaunt from hunger and his eyes circled for want of rest. His whole bearing was of one who had passed through suffering untold, and yet there was no word of bitterness or complaint. His gratitude for a sup of water from my canteen was richer to me than the plaudits of multitudes, and the fine courage with which he worked his painful way back to rest and refreshment caused my heart to yearn after him with a tenderness which he can never know.

Where a division is merely holding the line, there being no aggressive action on either side, except night-raiding parties, men can stand it for a longer period. Under such circumstances a company would stay in the front line for ten days, part being on guard while the others were sleeping. At the end of the ten days they would be relieved by a fresh company and return to a rest camp in the rear. The boys hardly considered it rest, as there was constant drilling, besides camp duties and activities of many kinds.

Out in No Man’s Land we had our “listening” and “observation” posts. These posts are set as near the enemy line as possible. It is very hazardous work, and requires steady nerves and clear heads. Each squad in a post remains for forty-eight hours, and each man of the squad is on actual guard for four hours at a time.

Where men are on the line in aggressive warfare, the action is so intense that they cannot stand up under long-continued fighting. In the Argonne fight our Ohio division was on the front line for five days after going “over the top.” Then they were relieved by a fresh division, which took their places under cover of the night.

As our boys came out I stood all night with another “Y” man on a German narrow-gauge railroad crossing, giving a smoke or a piece of chocolate to each man as he passed. The enthusiastic expressions of the great majority bore ample testimony to their keen appreciation. “You’re a life-saver,” is the way they put it.

Now let me give you a glimpse of the fine courage and noble manhood of the boys who were actually facing the foe in the front line. I have been with them in many positions and under varied circumstances even up to within three hundred yards of the Boche line. First a great word A Yank never feared his enemy.

The most horrible stories of Hunnish brutality and barbarity only served to intensify the Yanks’ desire to strike that enemy low. One of our splendid fellows, a private of the 102nd Infantry, came frequently into our station at Rimaucourt where I was a hut secretary during the first month of my stay in France. I felt instinctively that he had a story which he might tell, although he had the noncommittal way of an officer on the Intelligence Staff. Through several days of quiet fellowship the story came out.

It was during the time when the Boche were smashing their way toward Paris. It takes more courage to face a foe when he is on the aggressive than when he is being held or driven back. Our hero’s company was meeting an attack. He had previously lost a brother, victim of a Boche bullet. The spirit of vengeance had stealthily entered his very soul, and secretly he had vowed to avenge that brother’s death with as great a toll of enemy lives as possible, if the opportunity came to him.

No man ever knows what he will do under fire until the test comes, but be it said to their glory, our boys never failed when the crucial hour came. (They were soldiers not of training but of character.) Quietly, with unflinching courage, our boys awaited the onslaught. Finally when the command to fire was given our friend selected his men no random fire for him. One by one he saw his victims drop until he had accounted definitely for six. The next man was a towering Prussian Guard. A lightning debate flashed through his mind and stayed momentarily his trigger finger. Was a swift and merciful bullet sufficient revenge, or should he wait and give his foe that which he so much feared, the cold steel? The momentary hesitation ended the debate, for the Guard was almost upon him. Quickly he prepared for the shock, and, parrying the Hun’s first thrust, he gave him the upward stroke with the butt of his gun; but the Hun kept coming, and he quickly brought his gun down his second stroke cutting the head with the blade of his bayonet. The Prussian reeled but was not finished, and as he came again our friend pricked him in the left breast with the point of his bayonet in an over-hand thrust of his rifle. Still he had failed to give his foe a lethal stroke, and as he recoiled for a final encounter he resolved to give him the full benefit of a body thrust and drove his bayonet home, the blade breaking as the foe crashed to the ground.

There is a sequel to this story which we must never forget. Whatever may have been the undaunted heroism of our boys when in action, each one of them not only “had a heart” but also a conscience. And while war, which is worse than Sherman’s “hell,” suspends for the time the heart appeal and stifles the conscience, the reaction is almost invariably the same.