re grizzled old Frenchmen with backs
bowed by three years of warfare, and there fresh, clean young Americans
recently landed and a little amazed that they should be looked upon as
the hope of the staggering allies. Color, color, color! Confused
tongues, the buzz and babble of a thousand half-heard conversations, the
fragments of marching songs! Here was a cross section of the Allied
Armies, all of them with but one purpose. How could they fail!

The scene had a telling effect upon McGee and Larkin. Wordless, for a
few minutes, they stood watching the throng. It was McGee who spoke
first.

"Did you ever see anything like it, Buzz? Just look at the different
uniforms. There--look over there! A bunch of American Blue Jackets.
Wonder how they got here?"

"Humph! Wonder how all of us got here? That's what I've been thinking
about. This is just a moment snatched from the lives of all these
fellows. What went before? What homes did they come from, and who is
waiting for them? And what comes to them to-morrow? Gee!" He shook his
head, slowly. "It doesn't do to think about it. You want to find out
about them ... and you get to wishing they could all go on back home
to-morrow. Say, who started this talk, anyhow? Come on, let's go back
in."

"Wait a minute!" McGee seized his arm and turned him around. "There's
plenty of time before the curtain. Look, Buzz. See that black fellow
over there in French Colonial O.D.? Came from Algiers, I guess, or
Senegal, maybe. What brought him here, and what sort of stories will he
tell ... when he gets back home? Will he tell about what he did, or will
he talk about what he saw and what others did?"

"Dunno. Why?"

"Well, this has set me to thinking. We're all here on exactly the same
business. The uniform doesn't count so much, nor does the branch of the
service. It's just a question of getting the job done--a sort of 'Heave
Ho! All together, now!' Get me?"

"Yes--I guess so. What are you driving at?"

"This. See that American sergeant over there--the one who carried the
flag down the aisle and jumped up on the stage?"

"Yes. Big fellow, isn't he?"

"You said it! The biggest duck in this puddle, in more ways than one.
And I want to get into the uniform he is wearing. Understand, Buzz? Oh,
I'm proud enough of the one I'm wearing, but when he started the
national anthem, and they all came in on that chorus, 'Oh, say can you
see, by the dawn's early light,'--well, I felt cold shivers ru