"I buried him. It was a new experience, and not a pleasant one. But war is no holiday; it is not filled with pleasant experiences. And sooner or later it brings to a man a test, which, if disagreeable, is all but supreme. This was my test. I rose to it. I had to. I buried the man, ran hastily through his papers first and then sealed them into a packet to send to those who held him dearer than life itself." Because the Boston captain's experience was so typical of so many other Red Cross men who risked their all in the service at the front lines of battle, let us take time to consider it a little in detail. He came to France at the end of June, 1918. He stayed in Paris and chafed at the delay in being held back from the fighting front. In four weeks he received his reward. Having asked to be made a searcher among killed, wounded, and missing men, he was assigned to the Second Division at Nancy, which had just come out of the hard fighting at Soissons and was resting for a brief week before going into action again. The Second Division is one of the notable Divisions of our fighting forces that entered France. Because one wishes to avoid invidious comparisons and because, after all, it is so really hard to decide whether this Division, this regiment, or that is entitled to go down into history ahead of its fellows, I should very much hesitate to say that the Second or the First or the Third or the Twenty-sixth or the Seventy-seventh or any other one Division was the ranking Division of our Regular Army. But I shall not hesitate to write that the Second stood in the front rank. Out of some 2,800 Distinguished Service medals that had been awarded in France up to the first of March, 1919, some 800 had gone to this Division. And yet it was but one of eighty Divisions involved in the conflict over there. In the Second Division were comprised two of the most historic Regular Army regiments of other days--the Ninth and the Twenty-third. The records of each of these commands in Cuba and in the Philippines are among the most enthralling of any in our military history. And the Ninth was the regiment chosen to enter Peking at the close of the Japanese-Chinese War and there to represent the United States Government. These regiments before being sent to the Great War in Europe were recruited up to the new fighting strength--very largely of boys from the central and western portions of New York State. In addition to these two regiments of the former Regular Army, the Second Division held several of marines, which leaves neither room nor excuse for comment. The marines too long ago made their fighting reputation to need any more whatsoever added by this book.