Part 1 (1/2)

The Fight for the Argonne.

by William Benjamin West, et al.

INTRODUCTION

It was on the road from Neufchateau to La Foche, where Base Hospital 117 was located, that I first became acquainted with the author of this book. He evidently knew how to run a Ford camionette, even though it was not in just the shape in which it left the factory. I remember that I asked him what he did for a living back in the States--those service uniforms were great levelers--and he said he was a parson.

”But now you are a chauffeur,” I objected. ”Well, you see,” he said, ”when I first came over they asked me to fill out blanks indicating what I could do, and in that statement I admitted that I could run a car. I also said I could preach. They tried me out as a chauffeur and liked my work so well that they said they would stand pat on that; they had never heard me preach.”

As a matter of fact, I heard Mr. West preach that morning to the boys suffering from war neurosis, or ”sh.e.l.l shock,” in Hospital 117. He had helped them out on former Sundays there, and they sent for him again and again.

Later, when I was in the Baccarat sector, I met a most interesting and effective man who was in the Supply Department of the ”Y” on week days, and conducted services in outlying camps every Sunday morning with great success. He had been a circus acrobat back in the States.

What a revolutionizing influence war is, with preachers chauffeuring and acrobats preaching! The important point was that they were all serving whole-heartedly in whatever way they could.

It was in Baccarat that I met West again, running his car, transporting newspapers or moving-picture machines, or canteen supplies, or itinerant entertainers such as I, out over any sort of road toward the front line. His glimpses of the great war were from an angle of vision that makes what he has to say in this book well worth reading. His duties took him into every sort of billet, and brought him into close touch with many branches of the army, as well as with all sorts of welfare work and workers. I find that he refers, in pa.s.sing, to that dramatic moment when we stood on a hilltop and watched the bombing of Baccarat just below us, while the Boche machine pa.s.sed very close overhead. He does not say that he hid behind one tree and I hid behind another, trying to keep the trunks between us and the flying shrapnel. Nor does he say that he picked up and carried home a fragment which landed between us in the road, although it came just as near to me as it did to him!

This started out to be an introduction to a book. It is really a personal expression of good will toward one whom I was glad to meet and touch for a moment in that strange whirlpool of human activity last summer in France.

BURGES JOHNSON.

Va.s.sar College, March 3, 1919.

CHAPTER I

FIVE WEEKS IN A FLIVVER

”Halt!”

When above the noise and rattle of the car--for a Ford always carries a rattle--you hear the stentorian command of the guard, _instantly_ every stopping device is automatically applied.

”_Who Goes There?_”

”A friend with the countersign.”

”Advance! and give the countersign.”

The guard at charge, with bayonet fixed, awaits your coming. When you get within a few feet of the point of his bayonet the guard again commands, ”_Halt!_” In the silence and blackness of the night you whisper the pa.s.sword and if he is satisfied that you are indeed a friend he says, ”Pa.s.s, friend.” If he is not satisfied you are detained until your ident.i.ty has been established.

No matter how many hundreds of times you hear the challenge ring out, each time you hear it a new thrill runs through your whole being and a new respect for military authority holds you captive, for you instinctively know that behind that challenge is the cold steel and a deadly missile.

It was a splendidly camouflaged camionette that I inherited from Hughes when I went to Baccarat on the Alsatian border. In all my dangerous trips, by night and day, it never failed, and I think back to it now with a tenderness bordering on affection.

My first day on the job I was sent out to five huts with supplies, driving my own car and piloting the men who were sent out to pilot me.

Although they had been over the roads and were supposed to know the way, they did not have a good _sense_ of direction and so were easily lost.