“Well, can’t say that there was any too much excitement up on the old Cheman de Damns front (Chemin des Dames) except the mornin’ that Jimmy Leach, our cook, made real biscuits. It’s a wonder the Heinies didn’t hear us hollerin’ and come over, we made so much fuss over those biscuits. Then there was hell to pay after we put over a big barrage once. You _compree_ barrages, don’t you, that’s when all the big and little guns start popping off at once accordin’ to some kind of a schedule and generally the doughboys go over under the barrage to attack the Boche trenches. You see, before we got up there the Boches and French were fightin’ the _guerre_ like this, ‘You don’t shoot and I won’t.’ We changed that argument _toot sweet_ by startin’ in with barrages and raids. Naturally the Germans got mad and came back at us. That made the French hotter than hell. A general came right over to our general and said it had to be stopped. No wonder the _guerre_ ain’t ended. As we was under the French command we had to do accordin’ to orders. “You might think that we got into the ways of the _guerre_ with an awful jolt. But we didn’t. It just came to us gradual like. We got used to the whine of a shell and got so we could tell when they was comin’ and goin’. There wasn’t many casualties. Few fellows got bumped off in the infantry on raidin’ parties. We lost a couple or so in the artillery. “I saw my first dead man, killed in the _guerre_, about three weeks after goin’ in the line. Fragments of a shell had hit him in two or three places. He was messed up all over one side of the road. I couldn’t tell much if he was a man or mule, the way he was scattered ’round. A fellow standin’ near said it was Bill Rand, a lad I used to sleep in the same tent with at Boxford. Course I was sorry for poor Bill, but it didn’t worry me much. Never thought of it anymore—that’s the way it’s been for all the boys. Just got used to takin’ the _guerre_ as it came along. “The cooties got on us up there and I ain’t been lonesome for ’em since that time—don’t believe a fellow can ever get rid of the damn things. Gas was the big thing that scared me at first. Now it’s bombs. O. D., one of them Boche planes dronin’ over your bean, waitin’ to pull up his tailboard and let a bomb drop, is the worst thing I ever want to be up against. You ’ain’t got a bit of protection, unless, of course, you’re ’way under the ground.