SHOCK troops are all that the name itself implies. They are the troops sent forward, in human waves, to receive and break the first shock of contact with the enemy lines. Invariably a large number of them are doomed to death or injury, and the men themselves know it. But the very knowledge seems to drive them forward with greater fury, and the clash, therefore, is one of carnage for one or both sides.

These were the shock troops that were going over with the dawn against the entrenched Germans—if they still remained entrenched after the terrible fire to which they had been subjected for hours by the massed American artillery, augmented by the world-known French 75’s.

Even through the rolling smoke screen the light was becoming stronger, and Tom, Ollie and Harper, plodding ahead rapidly with their comrades, knew that soon it would be full dawn, that the screen would be lifted, and behind a barrage of fire that still would precede them for a short distance, the infantry would come to position to launch its close-range avalanche of rifle and machine gun bullets upon the enemy.

It was just as they were beginning to quicken the pace that Tom heard a grunt and a gasp, followed by a muttered word or two, and looking down upon his left side saw Ollie, almost up to his neck in a huge hole dug by one of the shells with which the Boche had made futile effort to stop the American fire.

Tom on one side and George Harper on the other, they managed to haul Ollie out, but the sudden drop had jarred him to the point of nausea and for several yards, as they double-quicked it to catch up with their line, they virtually carried their chum along, each of them holding to one of his arms.

Looking skyward Tom made another discovery. It was as though great flocks of giant birds peopled the air. Aeroplanes of every capacity and description and in various formations were maneuvering over their heads and beyond them.

Watching them as he trotted along, Tom saw from time to time a smaller scout plane separate itself from its group and dart forward and out of sight over the enemy lines. Presently it would return, sometimes to remain with its squadron, at others to continue back to some signalling point in the rear, from which it relayed the facts of the German’s position or movements.

Massive battle and bombing planes plowed along, their powerful motors beating a tremendous bass throb as their big propellers churned the air.

Here and there, too, were anchored observation baloons, the observers in them, equipped with parachutes for a long jump to safety at any time, sitting at telephone instruments connected with the various headquarters.

On the land and in the sky the battle was on—the history-making battle of the St. Mihiel salient!

Once a German aero battle fleet that a few months before would have been considered the most formidable fighting unit that ever took the air, sailed forward as if to engage the American gunners and pilots in a struggle; but either their courage failed them or better judgment prevailed, for there was a quick signal from the leader of the group, and with greater speed than they had approached they turned and fled toward their own lines.

“Fritz isn’t feeling very well this morning,” the irrepressible “Buck” Granger shouted, and a merry shout arose from the men who were within hearing of the remark.

And, indeed, it seemed to be the truth. Fritz was getting some of his own medicine, and apparently he considered it a rather bitter dose.

The smoke ahead began to dissipate itself in the brisk early morning breeze, and the men had their first realization that the firing behind them had almost ceased.

In subdued voices the officers were now counselling their men to use all reasonable precaution; and indeed the orders were necessary, for the lads, now this far upon their errand of victory, were ready to plunge ahead, regardless of all hazards.

And then in another instant the whole thing was on. Tom did not hear the order given. As he thought the thing over afterward, he wondered if any actual order had been uttered. It was a matter of doubt, not only with himself, but with many other of the men. But after all that was a matter of only secondary moment.

They were in—those men in the first wave of shock companies—and now they were racing like mad toward where the enemy lay waiting.

They were within fifty yards of the wood which was their immediate objective when they suddenly were made aware that it was a veritable wasp’s nest of hidden machine guns. With disconcerting unison they began to spit their bullets at the American lines, and the men, trained to just such a contingency, fell flat upon their stomachs with such alacrity that none could tell which or how many had been killed or wounded by this first defense of the hidden Huns.

The machine guns continued their murderous sput-sput-sput, but the range was over the heads of the men as they stealthily edged forward, now in scattered, zig-zag line.

Tom saw George Harper train his gun upon the thick foliage of a near tree, and, almost on the instant that he fired, a huge German came toppling through the branches and to the ground.

“Number one,” Harper muttered, with set jaw. But another sharp-shooter had picked him out, and he had hardly said the words when a bullet flattened itself against his helmet with such force as to drive it down over his eyes.

A sergeant crawled past where Tom and Ollie were scraping their way forward. “I want three men to go with me to get that nearest machine gun nest,” he whispered, “you two come along.”

As Tom and Ollie followed as cautiously as they could, they realized that the third man was their old friend, “Buck” Granger. “A little action at last,” he grumbled, good-naturedly, as he wiped from his eye a chunk of dirt that had been thrown up by a bullet which plowed into the ground less than a foot ahead of him. “This is the real stuff.”

The sergeant warned them to be careful not to raise their voices. They were making their way through a patch of tall weeds and grass, and the object was to move as rapidly as possible, and yet with every caution, so that they might overtake the nest without themselves being discovered.

Further to the left of them some of their own men already had risen again and were rushing toward the wood. This particular gun was trained upon them, and Tom gritted his teeth in silent resolution of revenge as he saw it send forth its hail of bullets, mowing down three Americans, painfully if not mortally wounded.

They were within fifteen yards of the spot when the tallest of the four Germans visible discovered them approaching. He muttered some gutteral sound of warning to his companions, but it was his last word, for the sergeant picked him off with a clean shot through the heart.

Hardly had the sergeant’s rifle spoken when Ollie, with the strength and aim he had gained on many a long throw straight from second base to the home plate in many a hard-fought baseball game, hurled a grenade directly into the group that remained. As the smoke cleared, Tom was at the gun, swung it about and turned it full upon a clump of bushes from which another batch of Boches were attempting to stop or stem the irresistible tide of American oncomers.

They attempted to surrender, but as through a trumpet Tom heard the shouted order of a major, “On, on! No quarter!” And with what had been their own weapon a few moments before, another half dozen of the enemy went to their Judgment.

Far ahead of them German guns were hurling shells at the point where the fight was becoming thickest, but for the time their range was sufficiently short to be inflicting more damage upon their own troops than upon the Americans. The battle was now becoming hotter with each moment, for while the first wave of shock troops was going forward with unconquerable valor, the Germans who were on the very rear of a vast retreating host were stubbornly contesting each foot of the way, marveling at the bravery of their opponents, not realizing that the avalanche of men throwing themselves upon them were fighting, not because they had been ordered or compelled to, but because they had before them every instant of the time the ideal of liberty and freedom which brought the United States into the conflict.

With a detonation that threw Tom and several other of the men flat upon the ground, a tremendous German shell exploded just ahead of them. It sent a great cloud of earth and rock into the air, and before they could arise a big tree, that had been completely uprooted by the projectile fell directly toward them. The others rolled out of the way, but Tom was not quick enough. One of the large branches pinned both his legs to the ground.

As he tugged in vain to get his freedom, George Harper crawled over to him. “Lay still for a moment,” he instructed his friend, “I think I can get you out.”

With bullets whistling and singing all about them, with now and then a shell screaming its death message almost into the pit where Tom lay an impatient prisoner, the two lads worked frantically, but to little avail. Although his legs lay in a slight depression, which left him free of the weight of the huge tree, he was nevertheless held fast, and at last Tom began to urge Harper to abandon him there until others came along.

“I’ll dig you out,” his friend replied, at the same time poising his bayonetted rifle for the job of scooping out enough earth to permit Tom to slip his legs out of the trap.

Harper was in that position when suddenly his eye caught something in the fallen tree which made him swerve suddenly. “You beast!” he cried, and with all the gathered force of his strong body he flung his rifle, as a primitive savage would a spear, into the nearby branches.

Tom, looking at that instant, saw the bayonet sink to the hilt in a brutal-looking German who at that instant was bringing up his gun to fire upon them. With one agonized grunt he crumbled, and then lay still; and Harper, averting his head, recovered his weapon.

Obviously the Boche had been an enemy sharp-shooter hidden in the upper branches of the tree, and until that moment had remained stunned by the force of the fall precipitated by a shell from his own lines.

Harper set to work instantly to dig Tom out, but it was not an easy job. As he lay there, virtually helpless, gazing up at the sky and at the scores of aeroplanes dashing, dodging, cruising about, he gave a gasp of astonishment which also attracted his friend’s attention.

With consummate daring a Boche pilot had dodged the apparently impenetrable American air defenses, and, with half a dozen planes pursuing and attacking him, was making straight toward a big anchored observation baloon that hung motionless in the air a little to the north of where the first wave of shock troops thus far had progressed.

The tremendous pounding of the motors rose even above the din of big and little guns. From every point Allied planes were sweeping down upon the Hun machine, but before they could overtake him he had fired an incendiary bullet at the baloon with unerring aim.

As it burst into a mass of flames that were lurid, even in the now broad daylight, the two men who had been occupying it as observers jumped out. There was nothing else for them to do, and probably it was not their first parachute descent from a great height. Nevertheless Tom gave an involuntary gasp at the apparent cool courage of the men as they leaped into space, and, for a distance of fully a hundred feet, shot down with tremendous speed toward the earth until their parachutes opened up.

They landed upon the opposite side of the wood, and the men who had watched them never learned whether they escaped in safety or were killed in the inferno into which they landed.

In five minutes more Tom was free. The fight by that time had forged steadily ahead, and beyond the delay of stopping to ease the dying moments of one brave fellow with a last gulp of water, they rushed forward to join the others of their platoon.

As they passed through the wood, which stretched longitudinally for a considerable distance, but was comparatively shallow in depth, they saw scores of Germans and not a few of their own men, most of them dead, others mortally wounded and dying, others temporarily incapacitated but not so seriously hurt, trying to staunch their own wounds and hobble back to first aid stations.

It was a sight that struck to the very heart of the lads, but looking backward for an instant they saw the second wave of indomitable men approaching, and scattered through the occasional breaches in their lines they saw that emblem of tender care and mercy, the Red Cross.

Where the Germans previously had dug in, just behind the line of the wood, was now a havoc of wreck and ruin, the whole earth thereabouts having been churned and plowed and furrowed by the terrific artillery fire which the Americans had poured in preliminary to the advance.

From where they had swung round the eastern end of the miniature forest, hundreds of tanks were now bobbing up and down like great, clumsy, fire-spitting beetles, as they lumbered across this chaos of mounds and gullies, paving the way for the renewed infantry attack that would open with the arrival of the second wave of shock troops.

Actual fighting had been going on little more than an hour, and yet the Americans had progressed more than a mile beyond where the first German line had been encountered, had taken what the Boche had regarded as an almost impregnable wood, peopled as it was with sharp-shooters and hundreds of machine gun nests, and by the sheer courage and determination of their attack had struck fear to the heart of the Hun.

Losses had been heavy, but they were slight as compared with the casualties of the Germans. It had been a fearful ordeal, and the attack really had but just begun. The men were begrimed, powder-stained and most of them crusted with mud. But they were as invincible now as when they started—and more anxious to continue.

Major Sweeney, his own left hand roughly bound in a handkerchief betokening a wound of some sort, dashed up for a hurried word as he passed along the line.

“Brave work!” he shouted. “You are doing no less than was expected of you, but much remains yet to be done. Make good use of your short breathing spell. The next half mile ought to be comparatively easy but beyond that it will be more difficult. No one of us, however, can have doubt of the result. Civilization never will forget what sacrifices you are making for it today. We must not weaken for a moment now.

“The enemy already is upon the verge of an utter rout. We must make it complete. He will stop a little further on to marshal his forces and make a desperate and determined stand. So far as possible we must prevent him from succeeding in that aim. We must keep him moving so fast that he will be unable again to reorganize his forces for effective resistance.

“All reports indicate that we are obtaining our objectives at every point along the line. Upon you men devolves the responsibility of taking Thiaucourt—Thiaucourt at all costs.”