The most horrible stories of Hunnish brutality and barbarity only served to intensify the Yanks' desire to strike that enemy low. One of our splendid fellows, a private of the 102nd Infantry, came frequently into our station at Rimaucourt where I was a hut secretary during the first month of my stay in France. I felt instinctively that he had a story which he might tell, although he had the noncommittal way of an officer on the Intelligence Staff. Through several days of quiet fellowship the story came out. It was during the time when the Boche were smashing their way toward Paris. It takes more courage to face a foe when he is on the aggressive than when he is being _held_ or _driven back_. Our hero's company was meeting an attack. He had previously lost a brother, victim of a Boche bullet. The spirit of vengeance had stealthily entered his very soul, and secretly he had vowed to avenge that brother's death with as great a toll of enemy lives as possible, if the opportunity came to him. No man ever knows what he will do under fire until the test comes, but be it said to their glory, our boys never failed when the crucial hour came. (They were soldiers not of training but of character.) Quietly, with unflinching courage, our boys awaited the onslaught. Finally when the command to fire was given our friend selected his men--no random fire for him. One by one he saw his victims drop until he had accounted definitely for six. The next man was a towering Prussian Guard. A lightning debate flashed through his mind and stayed momentarily his trigger finger. Was a swift and merciful bullet sufficient revenge, or should he wait and give his foe that which he so much feared, the cold steel? The momentary hesitation ended the debate, for the Guard was almost upon him. Quickly he prepared for the shock, and, parrying the Hun's first thrust, he gave him the upward stroke with the butt of his gun; but the Hun kept coming, and he quickly brought his gun down--his second stroke cutting the head with the blade of his bayonet. The Prussian reeled but was not finished, and as he came again our friend pricked him in the left breast with the point of his bayonet in an over-hand thrust of his rifle. Still he had failed to give his foe a lethal stroke, and as he recoiled for a final encounter he resolved to give him the full benefit of a body thrust and drove his bayonet home, the blade breaking as the foe crashed to the ground. There is a sequel to this story which we must never forget. Whatever may have been the undaunted heroism of our boys when in action, each one of them not only "had a heart" but also a conscience. And while _war_, which is _worse_ than Sherman's "hell," suspends for the time the heart appeal and stifles the conscience, the reaction is almost invariably the same. FOOTNOTES: [2] "Corn willie" was corned beef carried in small tin cans and eaten cold when on the march. CHAPTER V TANKS AND TRACTORS