“There was something of what the Scots call ‘fey’ about him as a soldier,” is the testimony of the chaplain of the 165th Infantry, Father Duffy. “He was absolutely the coolest and most indifferent man in the face of danger I have ever seen. It was not for lack of love of life, for he enjoyed his life as a soldier--his only cross was distance from home. It was partly from his inborn courage and devotion--he would not stint his sacrifice--partly his deep and real belief that what God wills is best.” Once Marshal Foch’s advance began, Kilmer seems to have been constantly in the thick of the fighting. In the _New York Evening Sun_ of August 8 a correspondent told how a party composed of Major Donovan, Joyce Kilmer and John Kayes advanced to the edge of a wood and captured a German dressed in an American uniform. “Joyce was one of those soldiers who had a romantic love of death in battle,” Father Duffy has added, “and it could not have missed him in time.” No, the stars move in their appointed courses; and there are certain things written aforetime. While he had life there was a defiant hope among us who knew his great gift for triumph that somehow this would see him through, that even over the inevitable he would prevail. But Destiny would not have been her immemorial self had she stayed her tragic hand from this shining figure, type and symbol in his taking of her unscrutable ways with man. And, somehow, in his death his life was all of a piece, and one cannot but admire the poetic justice of his end. Never fear but in the skies Saints and angels stand Smiling with their holy eyes On this new-come band * * * * * Your souls shall be where the heroes are And your memory shine like the morning-star. Sergeant Kilmer was killed in action near the Ourcq, July 30, 1918. “He had,” runs the report in _The Stars and Stripes_, the newspaper of the American Expeditionary Force, “volunteered his services to the major of the foremost battalion because his own battalion would not be in the lead that day.” From the report of Sergeant Esler and a letter (printed in the _New York Times_) to a friend in New York by Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of the _Times_ before his service abroad, the facts are established.