THE KHAKI-CLAD WARRIORS SURGED INTO THE TOWN FOR HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT WITH HIS POWERFUL LEFT HAND JOHN BIG BEAR HAD THE GERMAN IN A THROAT STRANGLEHOLD ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Brighton Boys at St. Mihiel ------- CHAPTER I BIG PREPARATIONS RAIN, rain, rain. Not the puny patter of a slow and drizzling and short-lived storm, nor the gusty petulance of an April shower, but a steady, sullen inundation that had set in more than a week before. For days and nights it had been nothing but a steady downpour, and from all appearances and barometric indications for days more it would continue to be nothing else. It was as desolate a place and as gloomy a season as one could imagine, and the abominable weather was but adding to the depression of the thousands of sturdy American youths who for weeks had loitered in what seemed to them a useless and nerve-racking inactivity in a vast water-logged section of France, west of St. Mihiel, almost south of battle-scarred Verdun. Now and then as the hours wore on toward late afternoon and early darkness, a rising wind seemed to whine something of an echo to the mental misery of those in the khaki-clad armies thus held as on a leash. Or was it more as a dismal-toned challenge to them as they wallowed through the slippery mud, unloading and distributing food, supplies, ammunition from the seemingly never-ending caravan of drab-colored motor trucks which hour after hour and day after day like the rain itself streamed in seemingly from nowhere to the veritable swamp in which the cream of American young manhood waded—and waited. Tom Walton, despite himself, was thinking of Brighton and the pleasant school-days there, as, just relieved from a monotonous sentry duty, he headed toward the company kitchen where he knew his good friend Harper would hand him out a cup of steaming coffee to warm his blood and loosen his stiffened bones. Often with Harper, and with Ollie Ogden, too, Tom Walton had played football on a sometimes soggy field at Brighton, but never, he was repeating to himself bitterly, had it been anything like this. But pessimism or drooping spirits cannot for long grip a lad in perfect health and possessed of the knowledge that eventually, soon or late, and probably at no far distant date, he has a great mission to perform. And so, with the first thoughts of good old Brighton, the mood of Tom Walton began to change, even the weather did not seem quite so dreary, the outlook not so glum.