Of all the stories relating to our colored troopers in their services overseas, I think the one I like best has to do with a brawny black infantryman, who, on his way up to the front for his first taste of actual combat, fortified himself on a full quart of French wine. As a result, he reached the forward position in a somewhat elevated and groggy state. He had been warned in advance that he was going into an exceedingly dangerous sector, but it so happened at the moment of his arrival the immediate vicinity was strangely quiet. He glanced about him in a foggy but disappointed way, and then, addressing his fellow occupants of the trench, spoke as follows: “Wha’s de war?—tha’s whut I wants to know! White folks suttinly is mouty deceivin’. Yere dey promises me a war. So dey rides me ’crost mo’n a million miles of ocean an’ dey marches me th’ough mo’n a thousand miles of mud, an’ all de w’ile dey keeps on tellin’ me ’at w’en I gits up yere dey’ll be a war waitin’ fur me. An’ yere I is all organized fur a war an’ dey ain’t no war! Dat ain’t no way to act. Ef ary of you folks is got ary war jest fetch it on an’ leave it to me.” A veteran of several months’ experience told him that his desires should shortly be gratified, inasmuch as the hostile positions were only about two hundred yards away, and the enemy was both active and alert. Hearing this, the green hand leaped upon the parapet and, standing there in the moonlight, like a great black statue of defiance, he shook a broad fist in the direction of the foes’ lines, and in a voice which might have been heard half a mile away he cried out: “Come on, you Heinie Germans, an’ gimme war! Gimme all de war you’s got! Gimme exploserives! Gimme gas shells! Gimme scrapernel! Gimme bung shells! Most in ’special I asts you fur bung shells!” At this particular moment a German minnenwerfer, two feet long and nine inches in diameter and filled with potential ill-health, went whirring in its wabbly, uncertain flight just over his head, and with a crash like the crack of doom struck not fifty yards behind him, tearing a hole in the earth big enough for the foundations of a smoke house. The belligerent warrior was slapped flat and instantly covered in a half inch coating of powdered grit and gravel and dust. There he lay, stunned, until the last reverberation had died away and the tortured earth had ceased from its quiverings. Then, slowly and cautiously, he sat up. First he felt himself all over to make sure he was intact; then he stole a respectful glance rearward to where the huge, new formed crater behind him still was smoking and fuming and throwing off noxious smells, and then he cast a cautious look in the direction from which the devilish visitor had come, and, finally, in a small, curiously altered voice, he said: “Well, suzz, dey’s one thing you’s got to say fur dem Germans—dey suttinly does give you service!” § 40 Once Every Ten Years