From the day the 2d Regiment went into Croanelle till it was relieved, six months later, no German soldier who set foot in the shallow trench went back. Our regiment, repeatedly reinforced, was kept at full strength.

Americans there endured pain and suffering, the depth of which Washington’s Army at Valley Forge never reached. Those old Continentals had nothing in discomfort on these modern heroes in front of Croane. Washington’s Army, in their own country, had access to the necessities of life. They held communion with their fellows. These later-day Americans, under the hardest discipline in the world, were cut off from civilization. They were back to the age of barter and exchange. Money would not buy goods—there was nothing to be bought—but if one man had a little tobacco, and another man a pair of socks, they would swap.

No furloughs were granted the first ten months. Every letter was censored. Packages of comforts, sent by friends, were stolen or confiscated en route. They were in a foreign country, whose language many could not speak. They had left good, comfortable homes for these holes in the ground, called trenches by courtesy, where one waded to his post on guard, rifle in hand, and carried a wisp of straw or a piece of plank on which to lie to keep from sinking into slime and slush, which covered his clothes with mud and filled his bones with rheumatism.

It was near midnight, the relief was in the basement of a shot-up chateau. The guard, on a scaffold, peering through loopholes made in a stone wall, was watching Rockwell sentinel at the advance output and alongside. They saw him stop, heard a familiar sound (the striking of a grenade cap), but it was in the rear. Suddenly Rockwell yelled, “Aux Armes.” Metteger, the burly Alsatian corporal, ran out, just in time to catch the explosion of a German grenade, and was killed. Rockwell, standing between the grenade and the corporal, was so thin the charge missed him and lodged in the fat man. Simultaneously, the guard at the wall heard a rush, a noise, a rattle of musketry from behind, and turned about face. The relief rushed out of the basement. The Germans, caught between two fires; cursing, disappeared into the darkness.

When the guard turned to repel the attackers, they jumped from the scaffold to the ground. Capdeville’s hair was singed by a bullet, a ball went through Soubiron’s cartridge belt. When Brooks, the cockney Englishman, jumped, another Englishman, Buchanan, fell on him, pushed his face into the ground and filled his mouth with mud. Brooks struck out and hit Buchanan, who tried to get away to chase the Boche. “You blankety, blank, blank.” Biff! biff! biff! “You will, will you?” The two Englishmen were still fighting when the guard came back. Buchanan had discovered that some one had made his gun unworkable, tramping mud into the magazine. He stopped and had it out with Brooks.

It was at La Fontenelle and Ban de Sapt, La Viola and Viola Nord, opposite St. Marie aux Mines, in reconquered Alsace, among the Vosges on the Franco-German frontier. Seven long, weary months we spent among those perpendicular mountains, with sunburned base and snowy, dripping tops. Dog trains carried provisions in winter. Pack mules clamber in summer, wearing breeching to keep from slipping down hill.

The continuous snows of winter, and the ceaseless flow of water down the middle of the trench in summer, while it also dripped from the roof of the dugout, and seeped up from the ground below, dampened both clothes and spirits, as we carried wet blankets and our misery about, up among the clouds of mist, in drizzles, sleet, snow and the intense cold. A sieve was a water-tight compartment compared to those shut-up dugouts.

The constant bombardment often changed so completely the topography of the mountains, one could hardly be sure when daylight came that he was the same man, or in the same place, as he was the night before.

We were beyond civilization. Not a flower, a garden, a cow, a chicken, a house with a door or window, or roof, not a civilian or a woman was to be seen. All work or fight, no recreation, it was a long, continued suffering. We had the Boche part of the time, bad weather all the time.

The trenches were so close together we fought with grenades instead of rifles. The wire in front, thrown out loose from the trench behind, was all shot up. The trench itself from continued bombardment was thirty or forty feet across the top, with just a narrow path down the middle, where one walked below the ground level. The hills were a wilderness of craters, blown out trenches with unexploded shells about.

Crosses leaning over dead men’s graves, were littered with ragged, empty sandbags, while pieces of splintered timber, tangled wire, mingled with broken boulders and lacerated tree trunks of all lengths and thickness. Holes grew now where trees had stood. Roots and stumps, upturned, replaced splintered branches and scorched, withered leaves. A few straggling, upright trunks, eighty to one hundred feet in the air, were festooned with sections of blown-up barbed wire.

The towns belonged to the dead, wholly deserted by civilians, with even the old women gone. Roofless, doorless, windowless ruins, twisted iron girders and fantastically broken walls, stood out against the sky, grimly eloquent, though silent, monuments of kultur.

Face to face with death, what is in a man comes out. I shall never forget one, who, right name unknown, came from Marseilles. We used to call him “Coquin de Dieu.” He had some system whereby he got extra wine—even at the front. That additional cup or two was just enough to make him happy and start him singing. Handsome as a woman, he looked the careless, reckless ne’er-do-well. During a terrific bombardment, I was sent to relieve him, out between two German outposts, one eight, the other fifteen yards away. Instead of going to the safety of the sap in the rear, that Frenchman insisted on staying with me. Germans broke into the French trench at the adjoining post, and went to the right. Had they come left, we would have been the first victims.

There was little Maurice, just twenty, who had been through the whole campaign. When dodging shells, he could drop quicker than a flapper and come up laughing every time.

Maribeau, eighteen, only a boy, always objected to throwing grenades. “No, I won’t—I promised my mother and my father I would not become a grenadier and I won’t.” One night during a Boche grenade attack, he and everyone else had to work for self-preservation. He liked it and became a splendid bomb thrower.

Was with Renaud, an old 170th boy, and Marti, on post, during a Boche bombardment and attack. Marti was killed by a grenade. A crapouillot fell into the trench behind. I was pretty busy throwing grenades, but caught a glimpse of a stray sergeant pulling Renaud under cover. Several days later, noticing a haversack hanging on the side of the trench, I wondered why it was there so long, also whose it might be. Inside was a piece of bread and a flat tin plate perforated by shell and splinters. Scribbled on the plate was the name, “Renaud.”

Big, strong, impulsive, was my marching companion, Peraud. He loved his wife and hated war. When thinking about war his face had so deadly an expression, no one dared disturb him. When his thought was of his wife, he looked a glorified choir boy. Once in Lorraine, during repose, he and his companion, Perora, a theological student, invited me to a church to hear the curÉ lecture on Jeanne d’Arc. While the student and the curÉ conversed, Peraud rang the bell which brought the soldier congregation.

Marching behind him, Indian file, through the trenches one dark night, I missed the barrel of his rifle against the sky line, and stopped just in time to prevent falling on top of Peraud, who had stumbled into a sap filled with the slush and slime that run from the trench bottoms. It wasn’t necessary to watch the rifle after that. I could follow by the smell.

It was in the trenches I first met him. Boche bombardment had knocked out the wooden posts that braced the sides of the trench. Dirt had fallen in and dammed the running water. We were detailed to walk, knee deep, into the horrible slush, and bring those dirty, dripping posts, on our shoulders, to dry land. Suddenly he stopped, took a look and asked: “Comrade, what was your business in civil life?” “I was engaged in commerce. And you?” “Me? I am an artist.”

Our sergeant spoke a little English. He was a good sort, who, owning a garage in civil life, had met many Americans and thought they were decent enough to invite acquaintance. One afternoon, during a bombardment, he, Peraud, Perora, Rolfe and Tardy were in a sap. Too careless to go below, they stood on the top step, in the doorway, sheltered from behind and on both sides. There was just the four-foot square opening in front. A shell dropped into that opening, killed four, and left Tardy standing alone. He was a brave soldier before, but no good after that.

Peraud and Perora had been bosom friends. They came from the same neighborhood, were wounded and sent to the same hospital, both changed into the 163d Regiment. Together they were killed by the same shell.

Comrade Deporte was an old 170th man. Names, being indexed alphabetically, always, at the end of a long march, Bowe and Deporte were put on guard, with no chance to cool off after packing the heavy sacks up the mountain side. Our cotton shirts, soaked with perspiration, felt like a board as the body rapidly cooled during the silent, motionless guard.

Deporte was a revelation in human nature. Unselfish, he did the most arduous and often unnecessary work without a murmur. We were always together on guard and frequently drew the bad places. Once, during a five-hour bombardment, isolated, impossible to get relief to us, he did not complain. Another time, hearing a suspicious noise in front, I threw a grenade. We got such an avalanche in return it almost took our breath away—and Deporte laughed! Home on furlough, he overstayed his leave five days and drew sixty days prison. He smiled—it was sixty days on paper!

One fine day we two were taken out in front during a bombardment. Captain Anglelli, with two holes in his helmet where a sniper’s bullet went in and out at Verdun, explained the situation to Deporte:

“You have the grenades?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“You see this hill?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“It is higher than that trench.”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“You can throw into there?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“The Boche will come through there.”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“You can hit him, he cannot reach you.”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“The American will stay with you?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“Bomb hell out of them!”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“Hold them there and we will bag them.”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

Smiling, the captain patted Deporte on the shoulder. Deporte, looking squarely into his eyes, grinned back. They understood each other, those two. It was not superior ordering inferior. It was man to man.

I should like to tell all that happened that afternoon. It was the wind-up of a week’s bombardment, and we had a ripping time dodging about to avoid being maimed for life. We held a mountain top on the frontier. The Germans had the peaks opposite, where they had planted their heavy artillery. When the French drove back the invading Germans, the lines stopped within bombing distance—about thirty yards. We had the upper line, they the lower. We could throw grenades on them, but it was hard for them to reach us. So they planted their line with trench-mortars that throw aerial torpedoes, crapouillots and bombs the size of a stovepipe, also others which resemble a two-gallon demijohn. They came slow. We could see them—the wide-nosed torpedoes coming direct, the stovepipes hurtling end over end.

These visible shells are only good for short range. We dodged them, but they kept us constantly on the move. The captain’s trench was flattened out—no need to watch that any more. The bombardment increased. Long range artillery from the mountains joined the short range mortars. The black smoke and noise from the Jack Johnsons and the yellow smoke from bursting shrapnel did not attract our attention from those three-finned torpedoes and hurtling crapouillots.

We would dodge for one but a half dozen might drop before we could look around. Deporte was buried by one explosion. I had to pull him out of the dirt. A big rock came flying down the trench, then a piece of timber four feet long. Two pieces of metal fell on my helmet which I picked up and have yet. They were burning hot, not iron or steel, but copper and nickel.

At a shout in front, we grabbed grenades and saw to the left a crowd of men running toward our lines, French and German. Later we learned how eighteen Frenchmen went over to the German blockhouse across the way, gave the forty occupants a chance to surrender, of which eleven took advantage. Revolvers and bombs finished the others. Two Frenchmen, both my friends, were wounded.

The Germans did not seem to like it. They got more angry and threw all kinds of metal at our dodging heads. An orderly rushed around the corner and yelled: “Fall back, orders from the capitaine.” He scurried away. We found a sap. I was thirty feet down when I looked up and saw Deporte standing at the opening unbuttoning his vest. Steam and perspiration formed a circle around him, such as is seen about an aeroplane flying high against the sun. About thirty feet down into that sap the steps turned a right angle, then again changed direction. We sat beyond the second turning, lighting a candle as fast as the inrush of air, made by the bursting shells, blew it out. A couple of hours later, when we looked for the hill we had held, it was gone. Immense craters yawned where had been our regular trenches. The rows of trenches were as waves of an angry sea, while the ground between was pitted and scarred beyond recognition.