The roads were filled with all kinds of soldiers--doughboys and more doughboys, _poilus_ in all sorts of uniforms, and then some more; horses prancing and snorting, mules heehawing and kicking, officers shouting sulphurous orders, guns and caissons, trucks and baggage wagons, all floundering along in the rain and mud, like dark rivers of humanity. On they came over crooked country roads that twisted around hills and plunged down into valleys, cut up and stirred up in muddy batter by heavy teams that had preceded us: a medley and jam of horses, mules, teams, guns and men! All this, though in seeming confusion, had a real thread of order and purpose controlling the whole. This confused picture will possibly convey some idea of an army on the march hurrying to get into action. Some of the units were divorced from their wheeled kitchens, and were savagely hungry,--we were--but wanted to get into the mix-up just the same with both feet. We had a little hardtack and bully beef but that made us mighty thirsty. We succeeded in getting a little water from the cart, and I told our men to keep some for future use. Some of my men had lost their gas masks. That wouldn’t do, and the top had to steal some from the Frenchies--which was unprincipled--but it had to be done. At last we were in it! As a starter we came upon some Huns hiding in dug-outs with a bunch of machine-guns--and then it was literally--what Sherman called war. But our men were there doing their best, and their best was pretty good! I saw our Major standing in a ditch handing out ammunition with his own hands, amid a confusing uproar of exploding shells, whispering bullets and sputtering bombs. We thought we knew what gun fire was, but we didn’t know the real thing until then. Everybody was doing the best he could. There stood Top Sergeant Sutherland shouting with a voice that seemed to come far down from his boots, “Right dress! you lousy sons of guns! Better than that! or I will drill thunder out of you when we get back to camp, if you can’t form a better line!” We found a bunch of Dutchies playing they were dead. “Get up!” I yelled. And tapped some of them with the stick I carried--“get up and march!”--and though they may not have understood what I said, they knew what I meant, and obeyed as docile as puppies. That evening we captured a little village which was as full of Huns, as an anthill is with ants. We swept them in and headed them for the rear. One of these was a husky officer that Sam Jenkins said he had hauled from a dug-out as deep as a well. “And that chap,” added Sam, telling me about it later, “had some nerve. He stopped short, took out his cigar case, and lit a cigar from a pipe one of the doughboys was smoking, and then went on ahead as cool as though he had come from an ice chest instead of a dug-out.”