“When we hit a town at night we had to stretch a picket-line for the _chevaux_, then water and feed ’em. After that we could feed ourselves and hunt a _chambre_ or hayloft to _cushay_. As a rule, the _chambres_ was all for the officers when we got to ’em. We sure had a tough time hikin’ across this damn country. Never did get warm the whole time. ’Bout that time my old feet began to get _malade_. Whenever you hear a Frog say _malade_ you’ll know they’re talkin’ about bein’ sick. They was so cold all the time until they would swell up overnight and in the mornin’ you had a fat chance of gettin’ your shoes on, as those darn hobnails used to shrink up like a pair of white-flannel britches do after washin’ ’em. One mornin’ the old feet was so bad that I had to wear a pair of those wooden boats ’round. The doctors call feet like I had trench feet. I’ve had ’em ever since. Wear tens now; used to wear eights and a half back in civilian days.” CHAPTER VII—THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE GUERRE “Long ’bout April second we passed through Toul and hit the American front. The First Division outfits was relieved there by us. Most of our gang got billeted ’round a placed called Boucq. I was at Corniéville before we went into positions. Our billets were the worst things a man could imagine. Dirty, cold, and hardly any bunks at all. “We soon found out that we was goin’ to fight a different kind of _guerre_ down there than we had been doin’. The country was so muddy and soft that you couldn’t dig in and make dug-outs. Everything was on the ground. Course my battery had to get the worse place of all—up in a swamp. If you got off the little duckboard walks you had to get a detail to pull you out of the mud. The positions that we had was on the Germans’ maps, as they had already got a gun belonging to the First Division, before we took the position over. “Two days after we got our pieces layed on some Boche targets they began throwin’ ’em over at us. That was the first time we’d ever been under real shell-fire in the positions. It was a regular circus. Old Bill Conway was on gas guard at the time. They gave us a klaxon for a gas alarm, unless it’s possible to rig up some kind of a tin gong to heat on. Well, Bill, he was walkin’ post swingin’ the Ford klaxon ’round, just as uninterested in the _guerre_ as if he had been walkin’ post in a safe Coast Artillery fort. He had been told to sound that klaxon in case of gas. A big boy whistled on the way. Sounds just like the whine of a dyin’ wildcat. Something terrible to listen to, believe me, till you get kind of fed up on the stuff. “Bang—Bluey! That two-twenty—we call ’em barrack bags, they’re so damn big—landed ’bout thirty feet from our last latrine and sent fragments of itself and trees, with about a ton of dirt, in all directions. Old Conway, with his eighteen years of continued service, started cranking that klaxon for all he was worth as he ran toward a bunkhouse. “Bang! Bang! Bang!