after the usual amount of orders and rescinding of orders had been accomplished the regiment was lined up in a column of three battalions and awaited the command “forward.”
just as the sun fell behind the green hills of verdun and the shadows of night began to fill the valleys a long column of american artillery started rolling toward the lines of the st. mihiel sector. jimmy mcgee and william g. preston, alias o. d., loaded down under their equipment and carrying canes, followed behind betsy, the third piece of battery c, humming the chorus of “where do we go from here, boys?”
it was two o’clock in the morning when the regiment reached its rendezvous in a wooded valley near rupt-en-woevre. the sky had become clouded and the early morning was jet black.
“guess we’ll get soaked, o. d.,” prophesied jimmy when they halted and got a chance to observe the weather conditions.
“will we stay here now?” asked o. d.
“oui. might just as well scare up a place to cushay. wait here; i’ll look ’round.”
a little while later jimmy returned with the news that there was nothing to do but put the pup tent up again and sleep on the ground.
“there’s one barrack here, but the first battalion guys grabbed that as they got here first,” he explained.
jimmy and o. d. put the tent up on the slope of a hill that formed the eastern side of the valley in which the horses and matériel of the entire regiment were hidden.
o. d. heard, in a sort of indifferent manner, the growl of big guns that seemed very near. he was startled once or twice by the crash of bombs and the anti-air-craft guns. but he was too tired to lend ears and thoughts to such things on his first night at the front, for the regiment was only a few kilometers from the first lines. o. d. fell asleep immediately and didn’t wake until three hours later when a downpour of rain splashed him from head to foot.
the wind that accompanied the rain swept the tent away time and time again. everything that jimmy and o. d. owned got soaked. the earth beneath them turned into crawling slime. finally, seeing the impossibility of keeping the tent up, jimmy told his friend to pull his shelter-half over him, head and all. jimmy did likewise with his shelter-half and blankets. the two boys, wrapped in canvas and blankets, lay in the deluge like two muffled mummies, trying to sleep.
instead of moving into position at once the regiment made at least fifty final preparations to do so, only to be ordered to remain in the valley for further orders.
four days passed. rain fell incessantly. the bottom of the valley became as slippery as glass. men bogged up to their knees in mud. there were no boots. the mess was a succession of “corned willy,” hardtack, and sugarless coffee meals.
at last, when every man and officer had reached the point of absolute disgust, the guns were dragged out of their mud-holes and hauled by horse and man power to the positions from which they were scheduled to launch their part of the drive.
passing through the shell-torn village of rupt-en-woevre, the second battalion, of which jimmy’s battery was a part, swerved off the main road and followed a woods trail that seemed to lead straight into the noises and strange, mysterious lights of the front.
a gun barked out, not forty feet from the road. o. d. looked to jimmy.
“are we at the front now jimmy?” he asked in a whisper.
“don’t know myself. guess there’s a battery in the woods near here. we’ll be there soon now.”
the firing was not very heavy that night. occasionally a big gun spoke or the staccato voices of machine-guns stabbed the night air intermittently. flares and rockets went up frequently, causing the darkness of the woods that bordered the road to accentuate. o. d. owned some strange, indescribable feelings at times, but he could not identify any of them as the sensations which he had expected to experience upon his first intimacy with the things of the front.
the column halted at a crossroad. orders to dismount came quickly and were repeated down the line of guns in ordinary tones. before o. d. had a chance to ask what was going on platoon commanders had issued instructions for the piece teams to haul the guns into certain positions nearby.
“well, we’re here. now for the business,” declared jimmy.
“you mean we are at the front,” gasped o. d., incredulously. “i thought—”
“sure, we all thought the same thing when we came up the first time. looked for signposts sayin’, ‘this is the front,’ or a bunch of germans tryin’ to get us. just like that no-man’s-land stuff. i’d heard so much about that place before comin’ to france that i thought it would be as easy to find as a piece of choice real estate. kinda expected that it would be a square field, or somethin’ like that, between two story-book trenches. first no man’s land i ran into was in the middle of a village. graveyard and church made most of it. the front’s built on the same idea.”
jimmy selected a spot near the third piece and arranged a place for himself and o. d. before o. d. fell asleep he mentioned that he wanted to write some letters to his mother and mary.
at the sound of mary’s name jimmy instinctively ran his hand over his breast pocket to see if the picture was still there. it was.
“you can write to-morrow, o. d.”
“i can?” said o. d. “i thought it would be pretty hard to get a chance to write at the front.”
“that’s what most of the guys spend their time doin’ when there ain’t no firin’ or work,” assured jimmy.
“well, good night, old man.”
“bon swoir, o. d.”
the mention of mary made jimmy forget about sleeping. since the night that he had spent in the french house with o. d. he had been day-dreaming whenever the chance to do so came. he wondered if mary was in love with somebody back in america or in france. that idea disquieted him a great deal, but judging from o. d.’s conversations, he felt at liberty to hope that her heart was still free.
when he was sure that o. d. was sound asleep jimmy lit a cigarette and took mary’s picture out of his pocket. by drawing hard on the cigarette he caused a fire glow that was enough to enable him to catch glimpses of her face.
“gosh! she’s a pretty, slender somebody,” mused the yank to himself. “bet she’s as sweet as she looks. it’ll be great gettin’ letters from her. if i make this old guerre i’m sure goin’ to know mary o. d. but i’m a nut. what business have i got thinkin’ that she’ll even look at a bum like me? i’d disgrace her most likely in public, ’specially at a dinnertable, as i’d forget and use the old knife. got to put the brakes on this cussin’ stuff, too. i can imagine her if i said ‘damn’ in front of her. i’d be fineed toot sweet.” jimmy put the picture away and puffed on while his dreams mingled with his blue cigarette smoke.
