Wearily now, the exaltation dying down, they left the stone towers of Vierzy to the right, in the path of the Regulars of the 9th and 23d. On line northeast of it they halted and prepared to hold. It was a lonesome place. Very thin indeed were the assault companies; very far away the support columns.... “Accordin’ to the map, we’re here. Turn those Boche machine-guns around—guess we’ll stay. Thank God, we must have grabbed off all their artillery, ’cept the heavies....”

“Lootenant, come up here, for God’s sake! Lord, what a slew o’ Boches!” Beyond rifle-shot a strong gray column was advancing. There were machine-guns with it. It was not deployed, but its intention was very evident.... Here were thirty-odd Marines and a few strays from one of the infantry regiments—nobody in sight, flanks or rear——

But to the rear a clanging and a clattering, and the thudding of horse-hoofs!—“Graves, beat it back an’ flag those guns.” Graves ran frantically, waving his helmet. The guns halted in a cloud of dust, and a gunner lieutenant trotted up, jaunty, immaculate. He dismounted, in his beautiful pale-blue uniform and his gleaming boots and tiny jingling spurs, and saluted the sweating, unshaven Marine officer. He looked with his glasses, and he consulted his map, and then he smiled like a man who has gained his heart’s desire. He dashed back toward his guns, waving a signal.

The guns wheeled around; the horses galloped back; there was a whirl and bustle behind each caisson, and two gunners with a field-telephone came running. It all happened in seconds.

The first 75 barked, clear and incisive, and the shell whined away ... the next gun, and the next.... The little puff-balls, ranging shots, burst very near the Boche column. Then the battery fired as one gun—a long rafale of fire, wherein no single gun could be heard, but a drumming thunder.

Smoke and fire flowered hideously over the Boche column. A cloud hit it for a space. When the cloud lifted the column had disintegrated; there was only a far-off swarm of fleeing figures, flailed by shrapnel as they ran. And the glass showed squirming heaps of gray flattened on the ground....

The gunner officer looked and saw that his work was good. “Bon, eh? Soixante-quinze—!” With an all-embracing gesture and a white-toothed smile, he went. Already his battery was limbered up and galloping, and when the first retaliatory shell came from an indignant Boche 155, the 75s were a quarter of a mile away. The Boche shelled the locality with earnestness and method for the next hour, but he did not try to throw forward another column.... “Man, I jest love them little 75s! Swa-sont-cans bon? Say, that Frog said a mouthful!”

The lieutenant wrote and sent back his final report: “... and final objective reached, position organized at....” and stopped and swore in amazement when he looked at his watch—barely noon! Sergeant Cannon’s watch corroborated the time—“But, by God! The way my laigs feel, it’s day after to-morrow, anyway!—” “Wake those fellows up—got to finish diggin’ in—No tellin’ what we’ll get here—” Some of his people were asleep on their rifles. Some were searching for iron crosses among the dead. A sergeant came with hands and mouth full. “Sir, they’s a bunch of this here black German bread and some stuff that looks like coffee, only ain’t—in that dugout—” And the company found that Kriegsbrot and Kaffee Ersatz will sustain life, and even taste good if you’ve been long enough without food....

The shadows turned eastward; in the rear bloated observation balloons appeared on the sky-line. “Them fellers gets a good view from there. Lonesome, though....” “Wonder where all our planes went—don’t see none—” “Hell! Went home to lunch! Them birds, they don’t allow no guerre to interfere with they meals. Now, that’s what I got against this fighting stuff—it breaks into your three hots a day.” “Boy, I’m so empty I could button my blouse on the knobs of my spine! Hey—yonder’s a covey o’ them avions now—low—strung out—Boche! Hit the deck!”

They were Boche—sinister red-nosed machines that came out of the eye of the sun and harrowed the flattened infantry, swooping one after another with bursts of machine-gun fire. Also they dropped bombs. Some of them went after the observation balloons, and shot more than one down, flaming, before they could be grounded. And not an Ally plane in sight, anywhere! To be just, there was one, in the course of the afternoon; he came from somewhere, and went away very swiftly, with five Germans on his tail. The lieutenant gathered from the conversation of his men that they thought the Frenchman used good judgment.

That afternoon the Boche had the air. He dropped bombs and otherwise did the best he could to make up, with planes, for the artillery that he had lost that morning. On the whole, he was infinitely annoying. There’s something about being machine-gunned from the air that gets a man’s goat, as the files remarked with profane emphasis. Much futile rifle-fire greeted his machines as they came and went, and away over on the right toward Vierzy the lieutenant saw one low-flying fellow crumple and come down like a stricken duck. This plane, alleged to have been brought down by a chaut-chaut automatic rifle, was afterward officially claimed by four infantry regiments and a machine-gun battalion. Late in the afternoon the French brought up anti-aircraft guns on motor-trucks and the terror of the air abated somewhat; but, while it lasted, the lieutenant heard——

“There comes—” (great rending explosion near by) “Goddamighty! ’nother air-bomb?”

“Naw, thank God! That was only a shell!”

As dusk fell, the French cavalry rode forward through the lines. The lieutenant thoughtfully watched a blue squadron pass—“If spirits walk, Murat and Marshal Ney an’ all the Emperor’s cavalry are ridin’ with those fellows....”

In the early dawn of the next day the cavalry rode back. One squadron went through the company’s position. It was a very small squadron, indeed, this morning. Half the troopers led horses with empty saddles. A tall young captain was in command. They were drawn and haggard from the night’s work, but the men carried their heads high, and even the horses looked triumphant. They had, it developed, been having a perfectly wonderful time, riding around behind the German lines. They had shot up transport, and set fire to ammunition-dumps, and added greatly to the discomfort of the Boche. They thought they might go back again to-night.... They did.

The night of the 19th the galleys got up, and the men had hot food. Early the morning of the 20th the division was relieved and began to withdraw to reserve position, while fresh troops carried the battle on. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines marched back, in a misty dawn, across the ground they had fought over two days before. In the trampled fields, where the dead lay unburied, old French territorials were mowing the ripe wheat and shocking it up. The battle was far away....

The battalion entered the woods and turned off the road toward the blue smoke of the galleys, from which came an altogether glorious smell of food. One of the company officers ran ahead of the 49th to find a place to stack arms and pile equipment. Presently he beckoned, and the lieutenant led his people to the place—a sort of clearing, along one side of which lay a great fallen tree. Under an outthrust leafy branch something long and stiff lay covered with a blanket.

“Stack arms ... fall out!”

Graves, the officer who had gone ahead, was standing by the blanket. “Do you know who’s under this?” he said. The lieutenant stooped and looked. It was little Tritt....

After breakfast, some of the men enlarged the pit where the machine-gun had been and tidied it up.... They wrapped the body in a blanket and two German water-proof sheets that were handy, and buried the boy there.

“... But before he got it, he knew that we were winning.” The men put on their helmets and went away, to look for others who had stopped in the woods ... to gather souvenirs.

“Well, he’s where he ain’t hungry, an’ his feet don’t hurt from hikin’, an’ his heavy marchin’ order won’t never cut into his shoulders any more....” “No, nor no damn Boche buzzards drop air-bombs on him——”

“Wonder where we’ll hit the old Boche next——”

The old Boche helmet made an excellent thing to cook with. You jabbed a few holes in it with a bayonet, so’s to have a draft, and a mess-kit fitted over it beautifully. When you could get it, strips of high explosive, picked up around a 155-mm. gun position, made the best fuel, giving you a fine, hot, smokeless fire. Smoke was not desirable on the front.

The chap on the opposite page is frying hard bread in bacon grease; he will sprinkle a little beet-sugar on it and have a real delicacy. Filling, too. As he goes about this domestic labor, he is humming “Carry me back to Ole Virginny.” But the files in the background are attracted by the smell—not the song.