Mary, Jimmy never gets any letters, except from a few boys that work where he used to. His folks are all dead. I told him that you would write to him. He is sending you a German officer’s helmet that he took from a German at Château-Thierry. You see, Jimmy has been at the front for a long time. I am at the front with him now. But, somehow, I don’t feel like I thought I would. It doesn’t seem so terribly different from a place that we stopped at about twenty miles from here. Of course the guns make a lot of noise when they go off and there’s all kinds of mysterious lights at night that make you think of ghosts at work. But the airplanes and bombs are what scare me most.... Before supper was served on the afternoon of September 11th the guns of Jimmy McGee’s regiment had registered on their targets and everything was in readiness to participate in the greatest effort that the First American Army was destined to make on the fields of France. That night there were no certain indications that the drive would start immediately. The ordinary precautions were taken. But they alone did not suggest to the men that something big was about to happen. Yet, in the blood of them all, a fever was present which brought its presentiments. “O. D., I got a hunch. Nothin’ certain in this _guerre_, you know. But I’ve got a feelin’ in my fingers that we’re goin’ to use old Betsy to-night,” spoke Jimmy. “Jimmy—Jimmy.” Neil was calling him. “_Oui_. What’s up?” “How do things look to you?” asked Neil, crawling in the little shelter tent. “I was just sayin’ to O. D. that I’ve got a hunch—just like the one before the battle of Seicheprey—that somethin’ is goin’ to come off. Mighty damn quiet, though. But it’s always that way before a real racket.” “What time have you got, O. D.?” asked Neil. “Darn near midnight. Jimmy and I have been sittin’ around talking a good deal. What are you doing up?” “I’m on guard to-night.” The shrill blast of a pocket whistle interrupted him and caused the three of them to jump a little. “Callin’ to the guns, boys,” whispered Jimmy. “I knew somethin’ was in the wind. Get ready, O. D.” “I’ve got to beat it, then,” said Neil, getting out. In a few seconds Jimmy and O. D. were running toward their gun-pit. Soon afterward the other members of the crew were at their stations. Just as the executive officer was giving out the firing data the world seemed caught in the vortex of a terrible electrical storm. Up in front of Battery C’s position a barrage from the seventy-five’s crashed into life. Big guns away behind the position began to bay.