Our French train stopped in the village of Boucq, near St. Mihiel. As I jumped to the ground from the side door of a forty-and-eight freight car, there was crashing and booming in the sky. Looking up, we saw German planes, and the Archies—anti-aircraft guns—popping at them. This was the first real sound of war since sailing and traveling these thousands of miles from California.

I was getting into the war in a hurry now, and things were beginning to move. Several of us who were lieutenants had fine headaches, for, passing through England quite hurriedly and into France straight to the front, we had worked day and night, and when we had any leisure, we got good and drunk.

In Liverpool, the first thing I saw was a soldier badly maimed, in blue hospital tunic. Then came a woman pulling a man with neither legs nor arms, in a little children's express wagon. That night, some of us went to town from the Knotty Ash camp. Liverpool was dark. Only shielded lights here and there. People lived in horror of airplane bombardment.

Across England we had traveled. At Oxford we stopped a little while. Several first-class coaches arrived, full of German prisoners; they were officers and entitled to this first-class passage. I walked over to the platform, and spoke to a very pleasant young fellow. Shaking his head, he expressed his opinion about the War—"Foolishness, foolishness, god damn foolishness."

"German propoganda," I said, laughing.

"Lieutenant," he said very earnestly, "I regret that you would believe me so rude as to think I could dissuade you. But . . ." and the train pulled out.

In Winchester we had left camp, and had started our drunken brawling in the Black Swan, nicknamed the Dirty Duck by the British. Here were kids in the air corps, literally not over sixteen or seventeen, lieutenants—pursuit pilots, bombers, observers. Finally, on the good ship Harvard—or the Yale, I forget which—we moved out across the channel, and next morning found ourselves in the port of Cherbourg.

From there we moved rapidly across the middle of France. With an officer detachment I was ordered to the 28th Infantry of the First Division, then in back of St. Mihiel. My arrival was simultaneous with the German planes and the noise of the anti-aircraft guns.

After the cracking of the anti-aircraft guns and the dull roar of the retreating German planes, everything seemed so still. But there would come a burst of machine-gun fire, or artillery, or aeroplane bombing, and then again, stillness. We left the train, marched to headquarters, were assigned, and were in at the front that night, stationed by Rambacourt, near Beaumont and Dead Man's Curve.

I was given the ammunition wagons of my battalion to command, no map, no compass, no orders—and a horse to ride. We moved up in the night, stopping in the village of Seicheprey, the spear-head of the St. Mihiel sector.

We quartered our horses. In a great rock house, converted into a dug-out, I stayed with another lieutenant, who had been there long enough to be sick of it all. At one A.M. of the 12th of September, 1918, a barrage went up.

Outside, a great long line of fire could be seen. The guns were placed together on a line of twenty-seven miles. The guns pounded and rattled. The sky was red.

It was the quickest advance in the World War. The Germans had decided to retire; their morale seemed quite low. So, staying in behind my wagons, I scouted around, looking for better roads, and better places.

Near sundown, troops still moving rapidly, my wagons got blocked once more. It was again necessary to make a detour, and I rode off to find a way. Riding at good speed through some trees, I came to a dead right turn, face-to-face with a band of German soldiers!

I was scared to death, and nearly fell off my horse. My knees banged up against the horse. I think even the horse was scared. I expected to be shot full of holes. My first day of battle would be my last.

To my amazement they all dropped their guns and held up their hands. There were twenty-six of them. They did not run up and say "Kamerad! Kamerad!" as the story books say. What they did do was to move up closer, but at a fairly respectable distance, and beg me, in the worst English I ever heard in Europe, to save their lives. By this time I was getting very brave and very patronizing.

They said they wanted to surrender. I said that was all right with me, and they could go ahead and surrender. I pointed to the Allied lines and said "Beat it!"

But they wanted to be personally escorted. They said that if I turned them loose they would get shot before they could reach the prison camp. They pleaded with me pitifully. Two of the younger lads were crying. My emotions were changing fast. First I had been scared; then I was proud of myself for having twenty-six men begging for their lives; and the latest emotion was brotherly love.

I agreed to take them back. We headed for the main road, where they could join the main line of prisoners going back to prison camp. I rode my horse, and my twenty-six captives trudged along beside me like a pack of hunting dogs with a huntsman. When we parted, one of them offered me a piece of sausage, and they wanted to stop and express their thanks, but I waived them on with a gesture, and "Allez! Allez!" I didn't know any German. Their leader saluted me very stiffly and clumsily in a fond farewell.

I have read stories of heroes, and have met them, but there are many illusions about the hero business.

If I had ridden back on my horse, having him curvet and prance, and had shouted that I had captured twenty-six Germans, I could have gotten a crowd together, made a record of it—and have gotten a batch of medals. Since my uncle was in Congress, there would have been no limit. Or, had there been a newspaper correspondent there, he could have made a hero of me without any further ado. Had this happened, I might even now be living in my illusions, talking of the glory of war, and walking around with my medals, being a citizen of no value to anybody on earth.

The line between coward and hero is sometimes very indistinct. Men are suddenly brave or suddenly cowardly. In one moment of emotion they are likely to be branded for life, one way or the other—and wrongly.

In the next chapter I am going to get into a real first-class battle, but here is my chance, before it starts, to philosophize a little. For instance, I now have the decorations of the Purple Heart, and the Silver Star. Both are very pretty. I got both for the battle in the next chapter and I deserved neither.

The Purple Heart I got because the War Department, under Hoover, conceived the idea of putting out a medal so the ex-soldiers wouldn't demand the Bonus. It was an old decoration of George Washington's, and the War Department decorated everyone who ever got in the way of a bullet or piece of shell.

The Silver Star came from a citation for gallantry in action. The story is simple. In the battle, every single one of my fellow officers in the battalion was killed or wounded. Two or three of us had been recommended for the French Croix de Guerre—but the battalion commander got killed, and finally none of us were left. So, long after the war, probably in 1920, they just cited us all. By blanket order, I got the Silver Star.

Medals are not to reward brave men, but to keep men brave, and make them fight. The ruling classes have always attempted to build up the hero idea. It stops men from thinking.

So, if I am any judge of myself, or of the poor fellows who have followed Wilsons and Hannibals, Caesars and Napoleans, the medals I received are not only the bunk, but badges of mind-slavery to pass on to my descendants. I may be unable to put a stop to them, just as an humble ancestor cannot prevent a descendant from building up a title or qualities that never existed. The badge business, the titles, fancy hats and cordons and ribbons, are to pass on, so that our descendants can keep on killing each other for no reason at all.

As an actual soldier of the late war and as one who got in the way of shells, I may be a very bad judge, indeed, of war. It is difficult to come out of war without your views all personalized. It seems the ones who have suffered it know the least. Actually, War is a complete annihilation of the individual, but to the soldier or to the one who must lose a son or his property, it is a mighty personal thing.

But the soldier has no perspective, can have none, and he does not consider himself a part of a great historical movement, any more than the Arkansas share-cropper thinks of himself as a part of a great economic problem. The soldier in battle must think of his existence; the share-cropper, the under-privileged, must do the same.

The ex-soldier who normally might be the liberal or even radical is thrown into reactionary groups. He lives in an economic system that will not use him, and he faces futility and a blank life. Hence he is forced to think of the big game of life in the terms of his wounds, and pensions.

It is the mass concept of our plans and hopes which we must comprehend. If we do this, the tenant and the soldier—and they represent over ninety per cent of humanity—may have something to say of their own destiny.

No philosophical thoughts came to my mind during this battle of St. Mihiel. It was constant march, fight, eat, sleep a little, move on. Rumble and roar, muddy roads, and once a great air battle in the sky.

In the last week of September we heard the great offensive had started in the Argonne. On the 26th, the American troops attacked. Soon after, our Division was ordered to march. An American Division was retreating at the front. Trucks stopped by our camp, driven by little slit-eyed Orientals, smiling French Indo-Chinese. In the night we climbed into the trucks and moved toward the front lines.