t Germany had not been beaten and that she was yet to be
beaten and that America's share in the administration of that beating
would have to be greater and more determined than had heretofore been
deemed necessary. It was the hope of the army that this realisation
would reach the people with a shock. Shocks were known to make
realisations less easy to forget. Forgetfulness from then on might have
meant Allied defeat.

Lagging memories found no billet in the personnel of that First
Division. Its records, registering five hundred casualties, kept in mind
the fact that the division had seen service on the line and still had
scores to settle with the enemy.

Its officers and men, with but few exceptions, had undergone their
baptism in German fire and had found the experience not distasteful. The
division had esprit which made the members of every regiment and
brigade in it vie with the members of any other regiment and brigade.
If you had asked any enlisted man in the division, he would have told
you that his company, battery, regiment or brigade "had it all over the
rest of them."

That was the feeling that our division brought with them when we marched
into Picardy to meet the German push. That was the spirit that dominated
officers and men during the ten days that we spent in manoeuvres and
preparations in that concentration area in the vicinity of the ancient
town of Chaumont-en-Vexin in the department of the Oise. It was the
feeling that made us anxious and eager to move on up to the actual
front.

CHAPTER XI

UNDER FIRE

On the day before our departure for the front from the concentration
area in Picardy, every officer in the division, and they numbered almost
a thousand, was summoned to the temporary divisional headquarters, where
General Pershing addressed to them remarks which have since become known
as the commander's "farewell to the First." We had passed out from his
command and from then on our orders were to come from the commander of
the French army to which the division was to be attached.

General Pershing stood on a mound at the rear of a beautiful chateau of
Norman architecture, the Chateau du Jard, located on the edge of the
town of Chaumont-en-Vexin. The officers ranged themselves in informal
rows on the grass. Birds were singing somewhere above in the dense,
green foliage, and sunlight was filtering through the leaves of the
giant trees.

The American commander spoke of the tradition