their departure for the front--this particular battalion--the
first battalion of the 16th United States Infantry. I knew, and every
man in it knew, what was before them.

Each man was in for a long tour of duty in trenches knee-deep with
melted snow and mud. Each platoon commander knew the particular portion
of that battle-battered bog into which he must lead his men. Each
company commander knew the section of shell-punctured, swamp land that
was his to hold, and the battalion commander, a veteran American
soldier, was well aware of the particular perils of the position which
his one thousand or more men were going to occupy in the very jaw-joint
of a narrowing salient.

All branches of the United States military forces may take special pride
in that first battalion that went into the new American line that night.
The commander represented the U. S. Officers Reserve Corps, and the
other officers and men were from the reserves, the regulars, West Point,
the National Guard and the National Army. Moreover, the organisation
comprised men from all parts of the United States as well as men whose
parents had come from almost every race and nationality in the world.
One company alone possessed such a babble of dialects among its new
Americans, that it proudly called itself, the Foreign Legion.

For two days the battalion had rested in the mud of the semi-destroyed
village of Ansauville, several miles back of the front. A broad, shallow
stream, then at the flood, wound through and over most of the village
site. Walking anywhere near the border of the water, one pulled about
with him pounds of tenacious, black gumbo. Dogs and hogs, ducks and
horses, and men,--all were painted with nature's handiest camouflage.

Where the stream left the gaping ruins of a stone house on the edge of
the village, there was a well-kept French graveyard, clinging to the
slope of a small hill. Above the ruins of the hamlet, stood the steeple
of the old stone church, from which it was customary to ring the alarm
when the Germans sent over their shells of poison gas.

Our officers busied themselves with, unfinished supply problems. Such
matters as rubber boots for the men, duck boards for the trenches, food
for the mules, and ration containers necessary for the conveyance of hot
food to the front lines, were not permitted to interfere with the
battalion's movements. In war, there is always the alternative of doing
without or doing with makeshifts, an