The Glory of The Coming

egiment of the Rainbow Division; and the orderlies brought us Hamburger steak richly perfumed with onion, and good hot soda biscuit, and canned tomatoes cooked with cracke

at and supped was the chief room of what once upon a time, before the war came along and cracked down upon the land, had been some prosperou

; but a segment of forgotten stovepipe protruded like a waterspout gone dry, from its hole above the mantelpiece. On the plastered wall of battered, broken blue cast, behind the seat where the colonel ruled the board, hung a family portrait of an elderly gentleman with placid features but fierce and indomitable whiskers

tter of American newspapers and American magazines. As for the doughnuts, they were very crisp and spicy, as good Yankee doughnuts should be. I had finished my second one and was reaching for my third one when, without warning, a very creditable and realistic imitation of the crack o' doom transpired. Seemingly from within fifty yards of the building which sheltered us Gabrie

y of sound went ringing and screeching, vilely profaning the calm

r hosts, a major, leaned forward with a cheerful smile on his face and remarked a

light batteries, both French and American but mostly French, joined in, like the wind, the wood and the brass of an orchestra obeying the baton of the leader. The coffee could not stay in the dancing cups at all. The

obiles to witness and afterward to write about was starting. The overture was on; the

o hostile territory is a little show; a feint by infantry, undertaken with intent to deceive the other side at a given point while the real attack is being launched at a second given point, and accompanied by much vain banging of gunpowder a

the rate of half a dozen within the twenty-four hours. In the dispatches each one means a line or so of type; in the field it means a few prisoners, a few fresh graves, a few yards of trench work blasted away, a few brier patches of barbed wire to be repatched; in the minds of mos

begin to appreciate the staggering expenditure of all three that is requisite to accomplish even the smallest of aggressive move

d from their excursion into hostile territory, with prisoners perhaps, or else with notes and letters taken from the bodies of dead enemies which might serve to give the Intelligence Department a correct appraisal of the character and numbers of the tr

king into account the supplies for the forty-three machine guns and for the batteries of trench mortars which were to cooperate. Many a great battle of our Civil War had been fought out with the expenditure on both sides of one-tenth or one-twentieth part the gross weight of metal that would be

along the wide high roads; had seen the ammunition trucks crawling forward in long lines; had seen at every tiny village behind the Front the gun crews resting in bad streets named for good saints. By the same

e carrying out of the undertaking had been completed; and all the guns had been planted in their appointed places and craftily hidden; and all the shells had been brought up-thousands of tons of them-and properly bestowed; and the little handful of men who were to have a direct hand in the performance

that instead of lying in layers upon the earth it floated in tom and dishevelled strips; one had the feeling that the upper ether must be full of holes and voids and the rushing together of whi

he afternoon we had seen sundry batteries ensconced under banks, in thickets and behind low natural parapets where the earth ridged up; and had

advances the gentle arts of ambuscade and camouflage have made since this war began. Seen upon the open road a big cannon painted as it is from muzzle to breach with splotchings of yellows and browns and ochres seems, for its size, the most conspicuous thing in the world. But once bedded down in its nest, with its gullet resting upon the ring back of earth that has been thrown up for it, and a miracle of protective colouration instantaneously is achieved. Its whol

k-guns which ranged from the French seventy-fives to big nine-inch howitzers. As yet twilight had not sufficiently advanced for us to see the flash of the firing, and

ore distant voices of certain German guns replying to our 'salvo as our gunners dedicated the dusk to all this unloosened hellishness and offered up to the evening star their sulphurous benedictions. It was Thor, Vulcan, Tubal Cain, Bertha Krupp and the Bethlehem Steel Works all going at full blast together; it was

ur friend, the major. "Well, it's only

th harnessings of his Sam Browne

r half an hour from now. Then you'll really hear something. Take it from me, you will.

orms took on the colour tone of the uniforms worn by the Confederates in our Civil War, but their painted metal helmets looked like polished turtle shells. They slouched along, as the poilu loves to slouch a

spread out before them and slipped away to their billets to go to bed-this, too, in spite of the fact that scarcely one of them had ever witnessed cannon

Me for the hay. If the Heinies would only slam a few big ones back in this directi

at the game whereat our men still were the greenest of novices. I suppose there was an element of theatricalism in the sight and in the fur

l firing that had waged about it, was almost unscathed. It was a populous place, the cemetery was, as we had noted earlier in the day. Originally it had contained only the graves of the inhabitants, but now these were outnumbered twenty to on

d line for miles on a stretch, and so thick-set were the markers that,

art of the toll-a small part of the toll-she has paid for the right of freedom and

d snaggled roof lines of the clumped houses of the town were vanishing; the mountain beyond seemed creeping up nearer and nearer to us. More plainly than before we could mark out the positions of the nearmost batteries for now at each discharge of a gun a darting jab of red flame shot forth. Where all the guns of a battery were being served and fired

e mouths of the guns. As nearly as we might tell the enemy fire was comparatively light. Only we could see upon the far flanks of the little mountain in front of us a distant flickering

any rate it seemed to us that all hell let loose. What really happened was that two guns of a French battery of nine-inch heavies, from their post directly in our rear and no

ds. First there was the crash-a crash so great that our inadequate tongue yields neither adjective nor noun fitly to comprehend it, the trouble being that the lang

rain travelling on an invisible a?rial right of way at a speed a thousand times greater than any freight train ever has or ever will attain. Then there would float back a tremendous banshee wail, and finally, just before the roar of the shell's explosion, a whine as though a lost puppy of the size of ten elephants were wandering throug

way abated, for rather was it augmented now-but only that it seemed so to me; and in the lull, away off on our

the luminous face

the boys to go over the top. Now we ought to see some real fireworks that

rtified. But if the reader in the goodness of his heart and abundance of his patience will re-read what already I have written in an effort to tell him what I had heard and had seen and had felt, and

at such rate that no longer might one distinguish separate reports-save only when the devil's fast freight aforementioned pass

ssen in volume and in rapidity. Within those twenty-five minutes the real object of the operation had taken place. Either the raiders had gone over the top or they had been driven back in; either they had accomplished their design of penetrating the enemy's second line of defences or they had failed. In

he colonel of the regiment holding the line at this particular point. An orderly brought us the last of the doughnuts to nibble on, and upon the ancient hea

hemselves down on adjacent cots with little sighs of relief and told us the news. In a way the raid had been a success; in another way it had not. All the men who went over the top had returned again after pene

etely abolished such boches as had tarried too long in the enemy's forward pits and posts. Of these unfortunates only dismembered trunks had been found, with one exception. This e

counter batteries, the wily German, following his recently adopted custom, had, before the barrage began, drawn in his defending forces from

ector, on our left, yet a third raid had produced four prisoners. I saw the unhappy four the following day on their way back to a laager under guard. One of them was a middle-aged, sickly-looking man, and the rema

t struck me as even more significant of the change in the personnel of the Kaiser's present army-conceding that these specimens might be accepted as average samples of the mass-was that not one of them wore an Iron Cross on his blouse. From personal observations in the first year of the war I had made up my mind that the

ck on his cot with his head on a canvas pillow and his mu

ver the top cheering and they came back in singing. You'd never have guessed they were gre

refused to betray it; if any one of them was nervous at the prospect before him he hid his nervousness splendidly well. Only, from them as they passed us, they radiated a great pride in having been chosen for the job, and a great confidence in its outcome, and

r finer men than that for his outfit. But they're le

that?"

for volunteers, first warning the men as a matter of routine that the work would be highly dangerous and no man need feel called upon to offer himself. Do you want to know how many men out of that battalion volunteered? Every single solitary last dog-goned one of them, that's all! They came at me like one man. So to s

l, that's all. They figured somehow they'd been cheated. As a result I may say that my rest was somewhat broken. Every few minutes, all night long, some boy would break into my room, and in the doorway salute and say, in a broken-hearted way: 'Now look here, major, th

them said. And when I turned them down s

blue hill. "I guess maybe I

airs to be bedded down for the night on a pallet of blankets upon the floor of a room where several tired-out officers already sno

roundabout; all was as peaceful as a Quaker meeting. Red, the colonel's orderly, stood in the doorway picking his teeth. Red is six feet two inches tall, and disproportionately narrow. He is a member of a regiment recruited in

earnt English yet. You'd think they'd want to know how to talk to people in a reg'lar honest-to-God language-but no, seein' seemin'ly not a-tall. I'd be

there town-it was so outlandish soundin'-but you remember the woman, don't you? Well, there's a case in p'int. She was bright enough lookin' but she was like all the rest-it seemed like she jest couldn't or jest wouldn't pick up enough reg