I met and talked with half a dozen of those engineers who were caught in that German counter-drive near Cambrai in November, 1917. The men, it will be remembered, were engaged in peaceful labor behind the British front, linking up railroad communications and forwarding supplies needed by the English soldiers farther up the line. No one supposed that the engineers were in any danger, and the squads went out without any firearms. But unexpectedly the Germans swept over the British lines and the American engineers suddenly found themselves in the middle of a battle. Some of them seized arms from fallen men and sailed in to the fight like seasoned soldiers. Others had no chance to get hold of guns, but did they retreat? Not so that you could notice it. They went for the Germans with their picks and shovels, and what they did to them was epic. In describing their work the British general in command said it was futile to bestow praise on the Americans. What they did was beyond praise. When I met these men they were just finishing up a piece of construction work at a camp in central France. It was not an especially interesting work, just day labor. But when the big push began in March these men, being free to move, were sent up to the front to build more railroads. “Aren’t they the lucky stiffs?” groaned a man in another labor group. “But our turn will come, I’ll bet you.” The lucky stiffs agreed that they were lucky, but they refrained out of politeness from saying too much about it. Of course, every man hopes to get up into the big show. But the work behind the lines has to be done. That is the spirit of the army, except on occasions when the men have to blow off steam. Bidding the lucky ones good-by, I expressed a hope that they would be allowed to carry weapons when next they went near a fighting line. They said that they were going to carry side arms, but one man said: “What’s the matter with a good sharp pick when you meet up with Heinie? He knows what a gun will do to him and he is game. But a Yankee guy with a pick has got him backed off of the map. Jim here killed two and chased two more with nothing in his hands but a shovel. I had a pick and I was better off than him.” Which was his modest way of telling that he and his pick had accounted for three German soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets. Thus had his grandfather fought wolves in some western forest, or killed rattlers in prairie grass. Pioneers! You can’t beat them. CHAPTER V WE FINISH WHAT CÆSAR BEGAN A standard joke, used with several variations in French music-halls, is to the effect that “the English only leased their trenches for three years, but the Americans have bought theirs.” This witticism is a tribute to the amount of solid preparation the Americans have made and are making and to the marvelous feats of engineering which are progressing rapidly from southern and western France clear up to the battle lines.