“It wouldn’t have been nothin’ more than half natural for us to mope ’round after such excitement and think ’bout it or talk a hell of a lot. But I never saw much of that stuff—not durin’ the whole time we’ve been in the _guerre_. Day after we got back we got an old madame to cook up a big feed for some of us that was on the gun crew. Had a hot bath before _monjayin’_, and maybe I didn’t feel like a regular guy! “All the fellows was cleaned up, and you’d have never known that they had been battlin’. Course everybody missed old Gordon. He could tell the funniest stories I ever listened to and play and sing stuff in a way that would have set Broadway nuts. Somebody got up and said a toast to him, and we drank champagne to his memory. There wasn’t no crape-hangers at the party. Course we was mighty sorry for the boys that had passed out. But we still had to fight the _guerre_ for ourselves, and if there’s any way the _guerre_ can lick you it’s by getting your goat over things that’s happened to you or your pals. You got to forget it, O. D. Got to be a hard guy as much as you can. “I heard lots about the stuff called philosophy of soldiers and all that bosh before I got over here—if it’s philosophy that they’ve got or actin’, I don’t believe the boys know it themselves. Anyhow they call it that in books and magazines. I used to throw that kind of line back yonder, years ago—so it seems. But I’m _finée_ now. You got to hand me nails when I ask for nails to-day. Brass-headed tacks won’t do, O. D. “But to get back to the philosophy stuff. In this _guerre_ you got to tell yourself that there ain’t no shells or bullets with your name on ’em, watch your step on the gas stuff and you ain’t got much to say about whether a bomb is goin’ to get you or not. So quit worryin’ ’bout ’em till you get in a raid. Makes no difference how close they come or how many they get right next to you. That’s just proof that nothin’ ain’t labeled for you. Get me on that? All right, next. One of the first damn things in French I’m goin’ to learn you is to say, ‘_Say la guerre._’ Means, ‘It’s the war.’ When you get to sayin’ that till you believe it then you got the old war licked a hundred ways. That’s my way of lookin’ at this stuff. Call it philosophy if you want to. But old Zeke Doolittle looks at it the same way and he couldn’t know a philosophy book from a monocle. “I ate so much at that party had to see the doctor next day. Had a bellyache that worried me more than the battle of Seicheprey. Doc tried to shoot some bull ’bout my havin’ got gassed—then he painted my stomach with iodine and gave me a pill—same old stuff.” CHAPTER IX—“THE OLD VAN SEEZEUM ON ITS WAY” “After the scrap ’round Seicheprey we didn’t _encore_ the battle much except when the Battle of Boucq started. That was one hell of a curious battle. The Boches got mad and began heavin’ shells ’way back in the rears. Boucq wasn’t too far away to be in it.