"I was there" with the Yanks in France Sketches by C. LeRoy Baldridge Private, A.E.F. [Illustration: Audsurade Belgium - Nov. 11/1918] "I WAS THERE" WITH THE YANKS ON THE WESTERN FRONT 1917-1919 BY C. LEROY BALDRIDGE PVT. A.E.F. TOGETHER WITH VERSES BY HILMAR R. BAUKHAGE PVT. A.E.F. G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1919 Copyright, 1919 BY C. LEROY BALDRIDGE TO OUR MOTHERS Ours the Great Adventure, Yours the pain to bear, Ours the golden service stripes, Yours the marks of care. If all the Great Adventure The old Earth ever knew, Was ours and in this little book 'Twould still belong to you! PREFACE These Sketches were made during a year's service as a camion driver with the French amry in the Chemin-des-Dames sector and a year's service with the A.E.F. as an infantry private on special duty with "The Stars and Stripes," the official A.E.F. newspaper. Most of them were drawn at odd minutes during the French push of 1917 near Fort Malmaison, at loading parks and along the roadside while on truck convoy, and while on special permission to draw and paint with the French army given me by the Grand Quartier Gènèral during the time I was stationed at Soissons. The rest were drawn on American fronts from the Argonne to Belgium as my duties took me from one offensive to another. It has been a keen regret to me that my artistic skill has been so unequal to these opportunites. The sketches do not sufficiently show war for the stupid horror I know it to be. I hope, however, they may serve as a record of doughboy types, of the people he lived with in France, with whom he suffered and by whose side he fought. Many appeared first in "The Stars and Stripes," "Leslie's Weekly", and "Scribner's Magazine", through the courtesy of whose editors I am now enabled to reprint them. C. LeRoy Baldridge Private, Am.E.F. June 1919 I WAS THERE [Illustration: Sunny France] [Illustration: Warming up the "corned willy" over "corned heat" (solidified alcohol)] [Illustration: Rain overhead and mud underfoot / Baldridge Near Montfaucon] [Illustration: The Yank] [Illustration: Fighting Trim] [Illustration: Seicheprey, America's old home sector. April '19] Seicheprey, America's old home sector--first trenches entirely under their own command.