orgotten. We swept
across that country, sweating under our packs, hardening our
muscles, stopping here for a day, there for five days for
extended-order drills and bayonet and musketry practice, and
somewhere else for a sham battle. We were getting ready to go into
the Somme.

The weather, by some perversity of fate, was fair during all of
that hiking time. Whenever I was in the trenches it always rained,
whether the season warranted it or not. Except on days when we were
scheduled to go over the top. Then, probably because rain will
sometimes hold up a planned-for attack, it was always fair.

On the hike, with good roads under foot, the soldier does not mind
a little wet and welcomes a lot of clouds. No such luck for us. It
was clear all the time. Not only clear but blazing hot August
weather.

On our first march out of the Cabaret Rouge communication trench we
covered a matter of ten miles to a place called Villiers du Bois.
Before that I had never fully realized just what it meant to go it
in full heavy equipment.

Often on the march I compared my lot with that of the medieval
soldier who had done his fighting over these same fields of
Northern France.

The knight of the Middle Ages was all dressed up like a hardware
store with, I should judge, about a hundred pounds of armor. But he
rode a horse and had a squire or some such striker trailing along
in the rear with the things to make him comfortable, when the
fighting was over.

The modern soldier gets very little help in his war making. He is,
in fact, more likely to be helping somebody else than asking for
assistance for himself. The soldier has two basic functions: first,
to keep himself whole and healthy; second, to kill the other
fellow. To the end that he may do these two perfectly simple
things, he has to carry about eighty pounds of weight all the time.

He has a blanket, a waterproof sheet, a greatcoat, extra boots,
extra underwear, a haversack with iron rations, entrenching tools,
a bayonet, a water bottle, a mess kit, a rifle, two hundred fifty
rounds of ammo, a tin hat, two gas helmets, and a lot of
miscellaneous small junk. All this is draped, hung, and otherwise
disposed over his figure by means of a web harness having more
hooks than a hatrack. He parallels the old-time knight only in the
matter of the steel helmet and the rifle, which, with the bayonet,
corresponds to the lance, sword, and battle-ax, three in one.

The modern soldier carr