Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive.) THE A. E. F. THE A. E. F. WITH GENERAL PERSHING AND THE AMERICAN FORCES BY HEYWOOD BROUN [Illustration: colophon] D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1918 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO RUTH HALE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BIG POND 1 II. THE A. E. F. 11 III. LAFAYETTE, NOUS VOILÀ 25 IV. THE FRANCO-AMERICAN HONEYMOON 36 V. WITHIN SOUND OF THE GUNS 56 VI. SUNNY FRANCE 74 VII. PERSHING 92 VIII. MEN WITH MEDALS 102 IX. LETTERS HOME 115 X. MARINES 126 XI. FIELD PIECES AND BIG GUNS 136 XII. OUR AVIATORS AND A FEW OTHERS 147 XIII. HOSPITALS AND ENGINEERS 164 XIV. WE VISIT THE FRENCH ARMY 177 XV. VERDUN 192 XVI. WE VISIT THE BRITISH ARMY 200 XVII. BACK FROM PRISON 221 XVIII. FINISHING TOUCHES 227 XIX. THE AMERICAN ARMY MARCHES TO THE TRENCHES 250 XX. TRENCH LIFE 260 XXI. THE VETERANS RETURN 281 Some of the material in this book is reprinted through the courtesy of the _New York Tribune_. THE A. E. F. CHAPTER I THE BIG POND "Voilà un sousmarin," said a sailor, as he stuck his head through the doorway of the smoking room. The man with aces and eights dropped, but the player across the table had three sevens, and he waited for a translation. It came from the little gun on the afterdeck. The gun said "Bang!" and in a few seconds it repeated "Bang!" I heard the second shot from my stateroom, but before I had adjusted my lifebelt the gun fired at the submarine once more. A cheer followed this shot. No Yale eleven, or even Harvard for that matter, ever heard such a cheer. It was as if the shout for the first touchdown and for the last one and for all the field goals and long gains had been thrown into one. There was something in the cheer, too, of a long drawn "ho-old 'em." I looked out the porthole and asked an ambulance man: "Did we get her then?" "No, but we almost did," he answered. "There she is," he added. "That's the periscope."