"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands— one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." This book is a record of the personal observations of a private soldier in the Flash Ranging Service of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. It not only relates his experiences while in France, but also tells of going over and returning. In brief, it is a soldier's story from the time he left America to help crush the autocracy of Germany, until he returned

When the sun arose on the 22nd of June, 1918, three great transports were lying out in the stream of New York harbor. They were filled with American soldiers for duties overseas. They were well camouflaged and well convoyed. The previous afternoon they had pulled away from a Jersey City pier, where they had taken on their human cargoes, and they were undoubtedly under sealed orders. They had slipped away quietly from the piers without attracting undue attention, and while they moved to the locat

At Brest, the American soldiers got their first idea of the magnitude of the work that the American Government was doing in the prosecution of the war. Prior to our arrival there we had heard a great deal about the construction work in French ports that the Americans had undertaken, but our ideas of just what this work was, were more or less vague. At Brest we saw just what it was. We saw miles of concrete piers that had been built in record-breaking time with American skill, American speed and

Before our train pulled out of Brest we were ordered out of our crowded compartments in the French railroad coaches for the purpose of bringing in traveling rations. These consisted of canned bully beef, canned jam, canned beans and bread. The bread that was given to us here was made into enormous loaves—the largest that any of us had ever seen. The loaves were sixteen or eighteen inches wide, from two and a half to three feet long and eight or nine inches high. They were American-made and were

After we were installed in the barracks at Langres and had our personal belongings straightened out, we were given the day to ourselves. This was the first freedom that we had had since our arrival in France. The boys, of course, all went to the business section of the city, where many of them were given their first glimpse of French customs and French methods of merchandising. As I had been fortunate in getting into the business section of Brest while we were there, this was not new to me, but

We were billeted at Novient for three days in wrecks of buildings that had been ruined by Hun shells. At first we did not do much work because it was not definitely known whether or not we were to remain there. Although we were in the war zone and under shell fire at all times, we were amazed when we learned that there were still a few French peasants in the vicinity. These were mostly old men and old women, and a few, but very few, children. These peasants would not leave their old homes, thoug

It was exactly at 12:01 o'clock on the morning of September 12th, when the great St. Mihiel drive began, and when all the preparation of which I told in the preceding chapter was brought into play in the first great independent movement of American troops, which was to give the Germans a warning of what they were to expect from the army from across the seas, of which they had so sneeringly spoken. The drive opened with a demoralizing barrage, the greatest of the kind that, up to that time, had e

One of the happiest days that I experienced during the period that I was at war was on Friday, September 20, 1918. On this day, after having made several visits to our new posts in the front line, I came back to our billet, where, to my delight and surprise, I found eight letters from home awaiting me. No one knows the joy that a letter from home gives to a soldier on the firing line. It is like taking him out of hell and placing him back on earth again. For several days we had been in the very

After being gassed and wounded, I was taken immediately to a dressing station, where the wound in my leg was carefully, but hurriedly dressed and my throat was swabbed with a preparation used in all hospitals to relieve the severe burning in the throat caused by gas. Of all the unpleasant experiences that I had at war, this throat swabbing was the worst. It seemed to me like the surgeon who performed this act had found in my throat a bottomless pit, and as the swab went up and down my burning es

On the morning of December 11th a number of the boys at the hospital at Tours received orders to prepare for a trip to the coast. This was the most welcome news that we could have heard and we hastily got our personal belongings together. It was about 10 o'clock when we were placed in ambulances and taken from the hospital. We were driven to the railroad station about a mile distant, and there assigned to quarters in an American hospital train. This was the first American train I had been on sin