“‘Did Roach or any of his dozen men get the _Croix de Guerre_ for that?’ we asked. “‘Oh, no,’ answered ‘Jimmie,’ ‘as I said, that wasn’t a regular affair. It was only Roach’s own party and there wasn’t nothing official about it.’ It was funny to see our bunch. Roach was a little fellow about five feet seven, and he chose as the second in command of his party a lanky artilleryman who was six feet eleven. The rest of us were just ordinary size, like me.’ (‘Jimmie’ Gardener is six feet three in his stocking feet and weighs 195 pounds!) “That artilleryman had just drifted into our bunch somehow. They had put him out of the artillery because he had flat feet, and told him to go home. He said he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to fight, and he was going to stay with us whether he belonged with us or not, and he did. “In a day or two we were put in trucks and hurried forward. We knew now that the Germans were pressing hard in their attempt to reach Paris. The French were falling back. We were run in those trucks directly between the retreating Frenchmen and the advancing Germans, and we got mixed up with the enemy so quickly that we simply tumbled out of the trucks oftentimes to engage in hand-to-hand fighting with the Huns. “We went right at ’em, and this thing kept up for four days. We had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to smoke—and everybody longed for a smoke, even fellows who never smoked before they entered the service—and we had no sleep in all those four days and nights. “A great deal of the time we were in close fighting. There was where the Germans failed. They were all right when they were twenty-five or thirty yards away and could use their rifles, but when it came to the bayonet they turned and fled. “Sometimes we fought so close that it was impossible to use the bayonet. We had to knock ’em down with our fists first. “Everybody said the odds were against us in this fighting. While we had some reserves there were only two regiments of us fighting and we were against three German divisions, including the Prussian Guards. But in four days we advanced one and a half miles. “We suffered terrible losses. When we reached the town of Lucy, where we halted to be reorganized, there were only 150 men left in my company of 335 men.” THE MAJOR SAID IT “There was another company whose commander was killed and a major took charge. In the middle of the fighting he had lost so many men that a French officer advised him to retreat. ‘Retreat hell!’ he cried: ‘I’m going on as long as I and one man are left.’ It came near coming true, for when he reached Lucy he had just three men left with him out of an entire company. [Illustration: © _Underwood and Underwood._ Brave to the Very End Though physically wounded—often mortally—the spirit of the French soldiers never perished, but immortalized their efforts in conflict.]