enthusiastic reply, "That's right--they need
it more than we do."

CHAPTER III

OUR INVINCIBLES

Twenty years to make a soldier! Well, that depends upon the kind of a
soldier you want. There were two kinds in the Argonne Forest from the
latter part of September to November in that last year of the great
war.

Four long dreadful years the Forest had been the impregnable
stronghold of the Kaiser's minions. The last word in the perfection of
trench warfare had been spoken by them. The most elaborate
preparations for the housing of their men and officers had been made;
dugouts of every description, from the temporary "hole in the ground"
with a wooden door and a "cootie" bunk to the palatial suite sixty
feet underground with cement stairs and floors, and with bathrooms,
officers and lounging quarters, all electrically lighted and well
heated.

[Illustration: MEMORY SKETCH OF A SECTOR OF THE BATTLE
FIELD 1918]

Machine gun nests had been planted in every conceivable point of
vantage from a camouflaged bush on the hillside to the concealed
"lookout" in the tallest treetop. Cannon of every caliber had been
placed throughout the woods and under the lea of each protecting hill
or cliff. A system of narrow-gauge railroads sent its spurs into every
part of the Forest, delivering ammunition to the guns and supplies to
the men, even connecting by tunnel with some of the largest dugouts.

The Boche had not held this stronghold undisturbed. The traditions of
the battlefield, passed from lip to lip, told of numerous and costly
offensives by the French and English, but always the same story of
failure to take or hold the Forest.

When the American offensive was ready to be launched the French were
eager to gamble, first, that our dough-boys could not take the
"untakable," and second, that if by any miraculous procedure they
succeeded in breaking the German line, they could not _hold_ what they
had taken. This did not mean that they doubted the courage or the
ability of our men, but that they did have knowledge of the
impregnable nature of the German stronghold.

On that eventful morning near the end of September, the rainy season
having started and the mud of the Argonne vying with the mud of
Flanders, our guns began to cough and roar. For three terrific hours
they spoke the language of the bottomless pit and caused the very
foundations of the earth itself to quiver. Germans taken prisoner by
our men after