FIX BAYONETS! [Illustration: [Soldiers]] [Illustration: Flare—Front Line, Champagne. That night, lying in its shallow, hastily dug holes, the remnant of the battalion descended through further hells of shelling. ] FIX BAYONETS! BY JOHN W. THOMASON, JR. _Captain, U. S. Marine Corps_ ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR [Illustration: [Soldier]] CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK · LONDON 1927 COPYRIGHT, 1925, 1926, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published March, 1926 Reprinted April, May, September, 1926 [Illustration: [Icon]] TO THE MEN OF THE FIRST BATTALION FIFTH REGIMENT UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS 1918 [Illustration: [Soldiers]] INTRODUCTION THE LEATHERNECKS [Illustration: [Soldier]] INTRODUCTION THE LEATHERNECKS They tell the tale of an American lady of notable good works, much esteemed by the French, who, at the end of June, 1918, visited one of the field-hospitals behind Degoutte’s Sixth French Army. Degoutte was fighting on the face of the Marne salient, and the 2d American Division, then in action around the Bois de Belleau, northwest of Château-Thierry, was under his orders. It happened that occasional casualties of the Marine Brigade of the 2d American Division, wounded toward the flank where Degoutte’s own horizon-blue infantry joined on, were picked up by French stretcher-bearers and evacuated to French hospitals. And this lady, looking down a long, crowded ward, saw on a pillow a face unlike the fiercely whiskered Gallic heads there displayed in rows. She went to it. “Oh,” she said, “surely you are an American!” “No, ma’am,” the casualty answered, “I’m a Marine.”