NEVER has there been such a sudden and simultaneous crashing outburst of artillery of every conceivable kind and calibre as ripped the darkness and the silence at two-thirty o’clock on the morning of September 12th on the southern side of the St. Mihiel salient.

For the five minutes preceding the appointed time every officer of the staff and line had stood gazing at his wrist watch, counting off the seconds, knowing what was coming, waiting for it, wishing for it, and yet withal unprepared for the terrible shock which seemed to make the very earth rock and roar.

With such an uninterrupted banging and booming and screeching and swishing as never before had been heard upon the face of the earth, thousands upon thousands of guns, massed side by side along a line twelve miles long, were belching forth as in one thunderous voice a new and world wide Declaration of Independence.

America, come to another continent to avenge mankind and save humanity and civilization, was pouring the wrath of the universe into the Hun lines and defenses.

Under the terrific shock of the thing men fell upon their faces in the trenches, their hands to their ears in a vain effort to shut out the screaming, nerve-racking death-cry of the cannon. The attempts were futile. Never for an instant did the guns pause; never was there the slightest break in their awful rhythm.

Men in the trenches whose duty still lay before them, marveled at the strength and endurance, the proficiency and the tenacity of those other men, far behind the lines, who were feeding, feeding, feeding shells into the maw of this tremendous array of artillery.

A veritable cloud of projectiles—death-dealing, trench-destroying shells—were being hurled over the heads of the infantrymen into the long-held defenses of the Boche.

And then, as if that was not enough for men to endure, just before they were to throw their own lives into the battle, the German guns began to reply.

They had no range, for the attack was a complete surprise. Had they been less self-complacent they might have realized that for days before, when an invincible fleet of aeroplanes of every description had kept their own air observers from flying over this area, something of great significance was under way.

But if they sensed it, their efforts to learn were of no avail, and so when the awful thunder of shelling began, they could only guess where the infantry and tanks were massed, which inevitably would follow in the wake of the artillery carnage.

So, when they opened up, terrifically, too, it is true, but with nothing like the force of the assault directed against them, it was with a sweeping shelling much like the playing of a searchlight over an area. It was not a barrage; it was more like the blind, helpless and hysterical hitting back of one who knows not where his opponent is.

Nevertheless shells fell dangerously near; and once a big one landed directly in the second line trenches, less than a hundred yards below where Company C was stationed. Its toll of death was appalling. A dozen men were blown to atoms. Rocks that had been part of the trench formation were thrown in all directions, dealing death and injury as surely as the explosive itself.

The inadvertent first cry of a dozen injured men was enough to shake the nerves of the strongest; for after all in warfare, it is not so much the risking, or even the giving, of one’s life, as it is the agonized suffering of others dying that makes a man quake, and for the moment falter.

Tom leaned over toward Harper and tried to shout something in his ear, but the effort was as useless as though the one had been dumb and the other deaf. It was absolutely impossible to make the human voice heard. When an officer wished to issue some brief order, it was only by signs that he could make himself understood.

Hour after hour it continued without the slightest halt.

Tom Walton began to wonder how much longer it would continue—how much longer such an earth-shaking onslaught could continue. Men who have gone through it know that the strain of such a thing, the absolutely inactive and helpless waiting, is the worst mental torture of all warfare, and far worse than rushing forth into battle which may mean almost certain death.

For a time thought seems to be suspended, and there is nothing but the frightful burst of explosions, during which one cannot think. And then comes a period of dulled senses—dulled to the present, and taking one into the past.

It is not like the mental sensations of a drowning man, in which the entire past life flashes before the mind in a clear but lightning-like panorama; but rather one takes up separate events, finds himself analyzing them for causes, motives; and, try to shake himself together as he will, cannot for the time rid himself of the melancholy fascination of it.

So it was with Tom Walton—perhaps also with Ollie Ogden and George Harper.

Men were not cowards who broke down and wept during that awful night. They were not afraid of bodily injury or death. It was the terrible strain upon nerves already strung taut with preparation for, and in anticipation of, the battle which they must fight and win. The very restraint which for the time curbed the fulfillment of their determination was the severest sort of sap upon their vitality.

Tom wondered at his own impersonal and disinterested detachment as he stood watching a man of his own company wringing his hands, unable to repress his feelings, the tears rolling down his cheeks. He had known the fellow intimately for months. Twice he had seen him risk his life to aid a comrade. He gazed at him now, but his own feelings were calloused to the other’s misery.

His own thoughts, strangely enough, were not of the present nor of the task so near at hand, but of his school days. And of all the incidents that crossed his mind, one stood out with particular insistence. It was shortly before he had entered Brighton, and when his mother, dear soul, was skimping herself of everything she could (as he knew now) to give him the education which she realized would be his asset later.

The day stood out before his distorted mind now as a great blot upon his whole career. He shuddered as he thought of it, and yet he could not turn his mind to other things. He reviewed it again and again.

He had started for school as usual that morning, but on his way had met companions. They, too, were pupils in the same school, but it was the late springtime of the year, and they were going to try the old swimming hole. At first Tom refused to join them, but finally the temptation became too great.

He joined them in their truancy, and they started for what they planned to be a rollicking day. On their way they invaded an apple orchard and pulled branch after branch of the blossoms that, left to grow, would have become ripe and useful fruit. Tom’s mother hardly would have believed that he would deliberately stay away from school, much less go swimming at that season when she had warned him that illness inevitably would be the result. But he had done both. And on their way home one of the lads, who had a sling-shot, had killed a chirping robin. It was probably that last act of heartlessness that showed Tom the exact character of the companions he had chosen for his day of deception.

That night he had had a chill, and for days his mother had nursed him through a sickness for which she could not account. And he had never told her. A feeling of revulsion and shame overcame him. For the time he even forgot the thousands of shells that were being hurled over his head. He wondered if in this battle he would be killed. A great longing came over him to see his mother, and in the old spirit of boyhood confidence to tell her the whole story. Yes, if he should live, he would tell her at the first opportunity. He did not want anyone else to have the chance to tell her first.

And with the good resolution came mental relief. He seemed to come back to himself again, and looking about him began to speculate as to what sort of thoughts were passing through the minds of the men about him. From one to another he looked, wondering what confessions, if any, they would make if they could.

But in such an inferno as that neither introspection nor retrospection can last very long, and it was the nearby explosion of a heavy German shell, sending a shower of steel and rock fragments into the trench, that brought Tom Walton to a keen realization of the present. A piece of metal plate nearly circular in shape, fully three inches in diameter, and most peculiarly scrolled by the forces that had blown it from the shell, fell directly at his feet. He picked it up, examined it for a moment, and then dropped it into his blouse pocket as a souvenir of his first night under such a cannonading.

A lieutenant tapped him on the shoulder, and he swung around as though shot. The officer smiled grimly an instant and thrust before Tom a sheet of paper on which was a brief instruction which could not be given verbally because of the din:

“We go over in forty-five minutes. Be ready when the artillery lets up.”

Tom nodded and the lieutenant passed to Ollie and George Harper, and so on from man to man along the entire section of trench occupied by Company C.

In forty-five minutes! The time was getting close. Well, anything was better than remaining there motionless under such a strain, not knowing at what moment a Boche shell might come thundering into their shallow stopping place to spread sudden death and mortal injury.

Men began tightening and adjusting their equipment, examining their rifles, cartridge belts and small arms.

A Salvation Army man came down the trench lugging a great can of steaming coffee. The boys of Company C greeted him with cheers which their lips formed but their voices could not make heard; and as they took cautious quaffs of the hot beverage it seemed to soothe ragged nerves and give them new vigor.

Tom looked at his wrist watch and compared it with Harper’s. They were exactly the same time. But half an hour now remained.

That instant marked another move in the game, too. In little groups men climbed out of the trench and went forward. Tom knew instinctively that they were the dare-devil wire-cutters—that the American artillery, adjusted like clockwork, had moved forward and these men were going out to cut away any entanglements that it had not smashed and entirely destroyed.

In this conflict war had become an exact science, and the men going out knew that except for an occasional German shell that might fall in their vicinity they were working behind an invincible screen of steel and fire.

There flashed across Tom Walton’s mind the picture of General Pershing as he had seen him on the preceding day in conference with the officers who were to direct and carry out the gigantic project which he and the other great commanders had formulated; and in the recollection Tom found new confidence and determination. Whatever indecision may have possessed him fell away; it was as though he suddenly had been shorn of shackles which weighted him down; he breathed in deeply of the powder-tainted air, and his only sensation was that of a great and noble strength of purpose.

Tom examined his watch again. But ten minutes more!

Suddenly, almost with as great a shock as it had begun, the firing ceased. If the expression can be made, the tremendous silence that fell upon the area came like a crash. For the men had become gradually tuned up to the dreadful uproar, and to have it abruptly break off set their heads ringing.

“Get ready, boys!” Captain McCallum’s perfectly controlled voice spoke out down the trench, and the lads could hear other captains giving like orders to their own men.

And then the artillery began again, but it was more subdued than before. Tom looked upward and realized that the first streaks of dawn were stretching out across the sky.

He was immediately aware of something else, also. The smoke screen was being laid down!

This was the final of the preliminary moves to their “going over.”

It began only a few yards out from the trench line and gradually moved off toward where the enemy had been undergoing such terrific punishment.

Lieutenant Gaston was alternating his attention upon the smoke screen and his watch. Tom looked at his own timepiece. It was 5.25 on the morning of September 12, 1918, four years to a day since the Germans had established the St. Mihiel salient!

Men were readjusting their steel helmets or tugging impatiently at uniform and equipment.

Captain McCallum raised his right arm and the men as best they could in their cramped quarters came to attention.

“Thiaucourt!” the commander shouted.

A great cheer came from every throat. It was taken up and echoed by companies on their right and on their left.

The captain again raised his right hand. His eyes were on his watch. The second hand was ticking round to 5.30.

The men stood with outstretched hands grasping the wall of the trench in front of them to leap up and out.

Abruptly the captain’s hand fell. “Let’s go.”

And with a wild shout of exultation men of that company, and men of other companies on either side, miles up and down the trench, were up and over, in pursuit of the smoke screen—and the Hun.