text: 527 S65 4-V CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library D 527.S65 \>A %> Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027944564 THE EDITION OF THIS BOOK IS LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES. EACH COPY HAS, AS FRONTISPIECE, AN ORIGINAL SIGNED PROOF ETCHING BY J. ANDRE SMITH, ENTITLED "AT CHARTEVES." THIS ETCHING WILL NOT BE ISSUED IN ANY OTHER FORM IN FRANCE WITH THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES |/ixU»; U-i-ii— i^ii^ AT CHARTEVES INFEANCEWTH THE American EXPEDITIONARY FORCES DRAWIIvJGS'BY tAndresmith ABTHURHHAHIO&OOPUBUSHERS N8569 Fl FTH-AVENUE-NEW-YORK COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY J.ANDRE SMITH Published December, 1919 Drawings Numbers ?, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, g, 11,^ 12, 15, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 lo, 12, 2J, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, JO, 32, J3, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 44 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59 61, 62, 64, 6;, 66, 67. 68 70, 7', 7», 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 and 99 are copyrighted by the Committee on Public Information PUBLISHER'S NOTE The majority of the drawings in this book are the property of the United States Government and form a part of the Government's official records of the Great War. Their publication here has been authorized by the Historical Branch of the War Department. Mr. J. Andre Smith was commissioned as Captain in the Engineer Corps and was the first of eight artists appointed by the Government to be sent to France in order to record the activities of our Expeditionary Forces. Mr. Smith attended the first Officers' Training Camp at Plattsburgh in 1917. He was commissioned as First Lieutenant in the Engineer Section of the Officers' Reserve Corps and for three months served in Washington in connection with the organization of the first Camouflage companies. Following this period, he was stationed at Camp American University with Company B, 40th Engineers, Camouflage. It was while he was on duty with this organization that he received his appointment as one of the Government's official artists; he was sent to France in February, 191 7. The notes that accompany these drawings were written especially for this book by Mr. Smith. TO MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM M. BLACK CHIEF OF ENGINEERS UNITED STATES ARMY FOREWORD HEN a war poses for its picture, it leaves to the artist the selection of the attitude in which the artist may desire to draw it. And this attitude is the artist's point of view circumscribed by the boundaries of his ability and the nature of the work forwhich his training and practice have fitted him. The model itself exacts no limitations; it is generous beyond all measure. It will sit with hands folded for those who wish it to, or it will strut with clanking sword, or pose as the mother of mercy, or the invading barbarian, or the val- iant hero, or the cringing coward, or, better yet, a composite of all these enveloped in a fury of sound and sight and horror as the two elements that form its existence crash again and again in their fiendish efforts to destroy each other and restore a world to peace. Here, then, is a varied selection, ranging from the sentimentaHst who pictures "The Girl He Left Behind," to the realist who shows you four years of war's terrors crowded into a cubic acre of land, sea and air. This "World War," which has just been ended officially with the signing of the peace treaty, was a double war; the first lasted only a few weeks and ended when, after the battle of the Marne and the German retreat, both forces were so exhausted that they had just strength enough to submerge themselves below the surface of the earth and glare at each other. Up to this point the war was an old-fashioned war, and with the Germans, so old- fashioned in fact that in its accomplishment of unspeakable horrors it out- did the efforts of the most barbarous barbarians. The second war was a trench war, and although it was none the less fierce, it was in comparison with this first murderous invasion a cool, business-like undertaking. There was, too, one other difference, and it was a vast one. It made soldiering everybody's business; whereas the first war was a conflict between profes- sional warriors, the second marked the entrance of the fighting civilian. During the first few months of this mad conflict the war had not had time to grow self-conscious. It was not until it had settled into trenches, recovered its breath, put on new uniforms and steel helmets, used gas, dropped bombs and felt reasonably sure of being something greater and more destructive and more expensive than anything in the world's history, did it become fuHy conscious of its importance and caU upon an astounded and shocked world to come and regard it. And so it happened that the journalists or war correspondents, who at one time were the only "outsiders" to enjoy orchestra seats in the theatre of war, were now being crowded by the arrival of novelists, poets, historians, propagandists, artists, sculptors, photogra- phers, and moving-picture men (not to mention a liberal scattering of mis- cellaneous scientists). All these spectators were allowed to view this "Big Show," record it, picture it, criticise it, and glorify it under the sanction of governments that made them their official, semi-official, or unofficial representatives. And between those who actually fought in the war and will record it, and those who stood on the edge of the fight and will record it, and those who were not anywhere near the war and will record it, this tremendous self-conscious struggle of Autocracy against Democracy is sure to go on record in full detail to form the pages of a history which future generations will probably regard as a record of unbelievable events. My contribution to this vast storage of war records is sHght. War posed for me in the attitude of a very deliberate worker who goes about his task of fighting in a methodical and thorough manner. If the picture of war which the sum total of my drawings shows has any virtue of truth or novelty it is in this respect: It shows War, the business man, instead of War, the warrior. It is an unsensational record of things actually seen, and in almost every instance drawn, as the saying is, "on the spot." The drawings cover a wide area of the work of our Expeditionary Forces in France and picture our activities from our ports of debarkation along the fine of our Services of Supplies, over many of our battlefields, and through Luxembourg into Germany and across the Rhine. Of the many sketches that I made for the War Department's official war records, I have selected for this volume only those which show, as nearly as possible, our various Army activities that came to my notice during the year in which I served with the A. E. F. as one of its official artists. The searcher after sensational pictures of conflict, the horrors of war, and the anecdotic record of soldier life and heroism will not find these subjects here. My drawings show merely the background of the A. E. F. J. Andr^ Smith. New York, July, 191 9. LIST OF DRAWINGS 1 . ON THE WHARVES AT ST. NAZAIRE 2 . THE BASIN AT ST. NAZAIRE 3 . A LOCOMOTIVE SHOP AT ST. NAZAIRE 4 . NANTES 5 . A VIEW OF CHAUMONT 6 . A DISTANT VIEW OF G. H. Q. 7 . AN AVIATION FIELD 8 . A ROAD AT THE FRONT 9 . AN ARTILLERY POSITION AT PEXONNE 10 . A CHOW LINE 11 . A BILLET IN PEXONNE 12 . A VIEW OF LANCRES 13 . A VIEW OF NEUFCHATEAU 14 . AT MENIL-LA-TOUR 15 . A VIEW FROM THE TERRACE AT BOUCQ 16 . WAGONS AND TENTS 17 . A VIEW OF BEAUMONT 18 . RUINS IN RAMBUCOURT 19 . A COMPANY BILLET 20 . AN ARMY KITCHEN 21 . THE BILLET BEAUTIFUL 22 . A SADDLER'S ROOM 23 . A BARRACK STREET 24 . A MONASTERY BILLET 25 . "LAME DUCKS" 26 . A REPAIR SHOP AT ISSOUDUN 27 . A GATEWAY TO THE FRONT 28 . AN AMERICAN GRAVEYARD 29 . AN UNSAFE BILLET IN RAMBUCOURT 30 . THE SHELTER OF A CHURCH 31 . A RAILHEAD DUMP 32 . A REGIMENT AT MESS 33 . ATNEVERS 34 . ASSEMBLING LIBERTY PLANES 35 . AT THE CAMOUFLAGE FACTORY LIST OF DRAWINGS 36 . SAUMUR 37 . IN THE SALVAGE DEPOT AT ST. PI ERRE-DES-CORPS 38 . A FARM AT SAVENAY 39 . A REFRIGERATING PLANT 40 . AN OBSERVATION BALLOON 41 . IN REHERRY 42 . A HOUSE IN BADONVILLER 43 . ATMONTDIDIER 44 . A BASE HOSPITAL 45 . CANTIGNY 46 . CRASHED 47 . A MOTOR TRAIN CONCEALED 48 . A REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS 49 . A WOOD ENCAMPMENT 50 . IN BELLEAU WOOD 51 . AN ADVANCE DRESSING STATION 52 . A BELLEAU FARM 53 . LUCY-LA-BOCAGE 54 . TORCY 55 . BOURESCHES 56 . VAUX 57 . A ROLL CALL AFTER BATTLE 58 . REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS AT GRAND BALLIOS 59 . A VIEW OF CHATEAU-THIERRY 60 . THE BRIDGE AT CHATEAU-THIERRY 61 . GERMAN SHELTERS 62 . ABRIDGE AT J AULGONNE 63 . THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE 64 . WHERE THE GERMANS CROSSED THE MARNE 65 . A VIEW OF MEZY 66 . A MOBILE HOSPITAL 67 . A CORNER IN ESSEY 68 . RAMBUCOURT 69 . BEYOND SEICHEPREY 70 . OVER NO-MAN'S LAND LIST OF DRAWINGS 71 . FLIREY 72 . THE CROSS-ROADS AT FLIREY 73 . NO-MAN'S LAND REGAINED 74 . A ROAD IN MONT SEC 75 . ON THE ROAD TO THIAUCOURT 76 . THIAUCOURT 77 . A SALVAGE DEPOT AT THE FRONT 78 . PONT-A-MOUSSON 79 . KEMMEL 80 . BELLI COURT 81 . SAINT QUENTIN CANAL 82 . A STRETCH OF FLANDERS 83 . AUDENARD 84 . VERDUN 85 . A WINDOW IN VERDUN 86 . THE ARGONNE COUNTRY 87 . VARENNES 88 . ST.JUVIN 89 . GRAND PRE 90 . A DUMP AT DUN-SUR-MEUSE 91 . A MINE CRATER 92 . DUN-SUR-MEUSE 93 . A FIELD ENCAMPMENT 94 . A VIEW OF LUXEMBOURG 95 . ON THE MOSELLE 96 . ECHTERNACH 97 . A CORNER IN BREMM 98 . A VIEW OF MONTABAUR 99 . COBLENZ 100 . CROSSING THE RHINE ON THE WHARVES AT ST. NAZAIRE THE American soldier who, on landing in France, expected to find him- self among utterly strange surroundings was sure to be disappointed, pleasantly, or otherwise, according to the degree of romance in his make-up. He landed not in a French atmosphere but into an Americanized zone of hustle, with merely a mellow foreign background. From the deck of the transport or the Hghter that took him ashore he looked down upon famihar looking figures in khaki, and more especially into the grinning black faces of the men of our stevedore regiments from 'way down South, a happy- go-lucky, semi-military crowd, who sang and joked at their work and made you feel that perhaps, after all, you had not been separated by three thousand miles of subs from "God's Own Country." [I] THE BASIN AT ST. NAZAIRE OF the several American ports in France, St. Nazaire was the most active. The narrow locks which separated the ocean from the basin and ship berths were constantly opening to admit huge transports with their "seven men a minute" or the continuous flow of paint-bedazzled freighters. Inside the basin there was a constant pulsation of business, accompanied by the noises of unloading, the crash of machinery, the hiss and pufl'ing of steam cranes, the rumble of freight cars and this whole melody of work enriched by an undertone of sing-song and chanting from the irre- pressible stevedores of our sunny South. And everywhere could be seen our men in khaki or in their labor "uniforms" of blue denim. It was indeed hard to believe that this was not America; in fact, an Americanized France rimmed these ship berths, extended itself alon^ miles of railroad tracks, into gigantic warehouses, and spread itself here and there into the suburbs of France.  A LOCOMOTIVE SHOP AT ST. NAZAIRE AT St. Nazaire, near the closed end of the basin, were two shops for the assembling of locomotives, both of them huge French steel and glass ^ structures that were given over to our needs. Near them, a gigantic crane would reach into the hold of a freighter, and swing onto waiting flat cars, packing cases as large as a bungalow and containing the unassembled makings of an American locomotive. These crates would be rolled into the shops and with Yank-power and crane-power be torn open with a rapidity that makes the pictorial recording of this part of the work a more fitting task for the "movie" man than the draftsman. With hardly less speed was the rest of the work carried on. In this shop we had room for as many as eight locomotives, and under the rush of day and night shifts, I was told that as many as eighteen of these iron monsters had been turned out in twenty-four hours, fully equipped, including the enraged high-pitched French locomotive whistle which, for some unknown reason, the French insisted upon our using, and which so persistently called forth the profane jeers of the doughboy.  .^W. rA,^w<->iAM Cj>y*~^ M-^f - »l ^-f NANTES THE problem of unloading our freight and food supplies, and all the paraphernalia of war that we would require to maintain an army which some day might number four million men, was one that gave our engineers and transportation officers occasion for ponderous thought and considerable figuring. With the establishment of the three major ports at Brest, St. Nazaire and Bordeaux, with their piers and vast storage houses, and together with a few minor ports to act as overflows, this difficult matter was admirably settled. One of these lesser unloading grounds was at Nantes on the Loire, not far from St. Nazaire. This drawing shows the river front, looking up stream along the string of ship berths.  A VIEW OF CHAUMONT IT was not always our good fortune, in our selection of places for our head- quarters, to find towns that were as attractive as Chaumont. Although the place is small and one could traverse its streets in a morning's walk, it has a dignity of architecture, and a distinct quahty of ancient loveliness which is not often found in towns in this quarter of France. This drawing gives one an idea of the plateau on which the town is built, and the line of houses that marks the location of the old city walls. The French barrack buildings which housed the extensive offices of our General Headquarters are on a spur of high ground to the west of the center of the town, and are to the left, but beyond the boundaries of this picture.  ■^^^^^^rs^^amu XI ' A DISTANT VIEW OF G. H. Q. THE French casernes, or barracks, showed little variety in plan or archi- tecture. A slight difTerence in building material and the size of the general layout were about all that one could distinguish in a trip across France. And so, the description of the offices of our General Headquarters at Chaumont would apply equally well to the various other barracks that housed our lesser headquarters: A rectangular drill ground with buildings of three stories and a mansard roof flanking three sides of it, while the fourth was shut off from the street by a wall or iron fence and symmetrically placed guard houses. Add to this the pleasant sight of the French and American flags, side by side, that marked the entrance gates, the guards with the ever- snappy salute, and perhaps a fringe of trees along the three sides of the open square, and you have a standard picture of our barrack headquarters. This drawing shows the buildings of G. H. Q. seen at a distance and from the back, while to the right can be seen the roofs of the main part of Chaumont.  AN AVIATION FIELD THE airman of the future, who after a flight of ten hours or so loses himself in fog, or through the failure of his instruments has drifted wide of his course, will experience some uncertainty of the country or state in which he has landed if he depends entirely upon the appearance of aerodromes. At present they seem to have an international pattern consisting of a row of hangars of canvas, wood, or metal and with a prairie as a front yard. For this reason the drawing shown here will make no particular appeal as a spot on this earth with a definite geographical location. As a matter of fact, it is the parking space in front of the long hne of hangars on Field No. i at Issoudun, the largest of our aviation schools in France.  iv^j'.'ryi-T.f^ . ^LiitC. -y-^f^ l-Vltfy/j^ A ROAD AT THE FRONT IT would be hard to explain the feeling of safety that a thin veil of leaves and branches gives to one, whether it be the overhead screening of a gun pit or the long curtain of camouflage along a roadside. You need but to cross an open field in possible view of a far-seeing enemy and duck behind a net of burlap and raffia to appreciate fully this sense of snugness and protec- tion. But it is chiefly a mental comfort, and the real purpose of these sheltered ways was to deprive the enemy, as far as possible, of the joy of sniping at you with his artillery. The road shown here is near Baccarat, and leads from Merviller to Pexonne. The Germans occupied the distant hills and had an observation post on the sharper rise of the hill which shows in the center of this drawing.  AN ARTILLERY POSITION AT PEXONNE THIS drawing was made on one of those early April days that are bathed in the first real warmth of spring sunshine. Hardly ten feet from where I stood was a group of apple trees in full splendor of pink blossoms, and except for a gash of raw dirt and mud that marked the subterranean passage to a cave through whose narrow, horizontal window a gun pointed to the enemy, the grass about me was a mat of soft lusciousness. In a nearby field a man could be seen plowing. Against this setting of pastoral beauty it was difficult to account for the fine of shattered trees and fallen branches that marked the position of our batteries and the enemy's efforts to silence them. It was harder still to explain the pecufiar whirring sound of an on-coming shell and its sudden burst in the tranquil blue dome above your head. Here was a picture of war that was not for a warrior but for a poet . . . a poet in a "tin hat."  w&i^ mti m fi &^imii i ¥ f i 9 0>i9 f»''if'^fi<!i«!i> fx^o «,H'^ A CHOW LINE WAITING around occupies about ninety per cent of a soldier's time; and it would seem that most of this time was spent in a line or cue. From the day on which you first take your place in line for physical examination until that day when you stand waiting m line for your discharge papers your entire soldierhood is a succession of hours of waiting in long, slow-moving files. It would be hard to say which of these is the most unpleas- ant and which the least. It depends, of course, on what is waiting for you at the end of it ... a "shot in the arm" or your pay. But experience indicates that it is more apt to be a swelling in your arm than in your purse. The most habitual line of all is the mess line, and in the degree of hope and promise that it holds forth it is the most popular of them all. This drawing shows a frag- ment of such a "chow line." Along the route of our camps and rest billets it seemed as if these hunger lines were a perpetual institution, and it was a rare occasion indeed when you did not see at least three or four of these files of unfillable doughboys holding their mess kits while their puttees bristled with knives, forks and spoons.  A BILLET IN PEXONNE ALTHOUGH rest billets were generally conceded to be unrest billets, still the impression one got in passing through a string of these vil- ^ lages in back of the front was that by far the greatest majority of its khaki-clad inhabitants were devoting themselves to doing nothing in par- ticular; and whether they were enjoying a rest or merely enduring one, the outstanding fact remains that they were not suffering from work, whatever else their grievances might have been (and no doubt there were many). The one undeniable privilege of a soldier is his kicking-right and to rob him of the causes that provoke the exercise of this privilege would render many a man speechless, which, of course, would never do. And so, a wanderer in the areas of rest, if he should weigh the snatches of a doughboy's conversation that he had overheard, would probably find ninety-nine per cent of it grumble talk, varying from the characteristic condemnation of the army Hfe to some insig- nificant grievance between himself and his bunkie. All this the doughboy fully enjoys. It is the vent of emotions conceived in the pain of physical discomfort and born during moments of temporary leisure. This drawing is characteristic of a setting of billets and doughboys in a rest area. It is in the village of Pexonne, northeast of Baccarat. [II] A VIEW OF LANGRES 1ANGRES was the A. E. F. capital of military learning. Situated on a high plateau, its appearance is suggestive of the hill towns of Italy. ■^ From the ancient walls that surround the town one can look down upon great stretches of roIHng country, ribboned with silver-white roads and pat- terned with patches of fields and woodland. Against this tranquiUity of spa- ciousness, a casual visitor might be startled by the sudden sound of artillery, the violence of exploding hand-grenades and trench mortars. If he happened to be a visitor from St. Nazaire, or some other lower reach of the S. O. S. with a rather vague knowledge (as is apt to be the case) of the exact location of the front, he might have enjoyed the thrill that accompanies one's first sound of guns. And if that happened to be the case, it was a pity to have to tell him that the real front was many kilometers beyond his hearing and that he had merely been listening to what one might call the school-room exercises of some of our various colleges of destruction.  A VIEW OF NEUFCHATEAU THE drawing was made from a hill at the west of the town, and although the town spreads to the right in an area about as much again as is seen here, it gives one an idea of the rather compact clustering of houses in these smaller French towns. It shows also, and the knowledge was not always a comforting one, how easy it would be and, for that matter, how easy it was for an enemy airman to find it a target for his night bombs. Located about half way between General Headquarters and the front, Neufchateau was always a center of American activity. It served as headquarters for all sorts of organizations or it would be the ternporary organizing point for the various sections of our fast growing armies. Officers would suddenly crowd into town, get billeted with considerable trouble (since the town was not very large) and then vanish again, only to be succeeded by a new group. Here too was located a base hospital and also the "Guest House" which was the army's official bureau for distinguished visitors. And so, taking it all in all, the sleepy town of Neufchateau prospered and with true French thrift kept its earnings against the coming of the dull days of peace.  AT MENIL-LA-TOUR THE villages in Lorraine were, as a rule, rather void of any architectural charm. Their houses, hardly ever more than two stories high, were usually strung along both sides of the main highway, not free-standing, but wall to wall, and alternating between stables and dwellings, and occa- sionally, it would seem, a combination of both. These houses, as a rule, were set back from the highway to allow room for a wagon stand and the inevi- table treasure-pile of manure. Occasionally a village would boast a by-street or two, and chance, or its original founders would bless it with a site on the junction of two roads. It would then look almost hke a real town. Menil-Ia- Tour was one of these cross-road villages; it was ugly and dusty or ugly and muddy, according to the season of the year; but always ugly. Neither was it in any way beautified by the addition of long lines of barracks and storage houses and the various mountainous unloadings of quartermaster supplies that our occupation of the village made necessary. The place served originally as our first divisional headquarters, but later with the growth of our forces and the spread of our fighting activities, it became a rail-head and a sort of half-way station to the Toul sector front. This drawing was made on the by-road that leads to Sanzy and although it gives one an idea of the character of these villages it does but poor justice to their stark ugliness.  i^L A VIEW FROM THE TERRACE AT BOUCQ AS a grandstand seat of the panorama of war, the terrace of the chateau at Boucq (a divisional headquarters) would have been unique if the war ^ in this quarter had been more war-like and less a matter of business. Even during the St. Mihiel drive, aside from the thunder of several thousand guns and their flashes that lighted the night hke the fires of hell, the view, by day, remained one of expansive tranquilHty. This sweep of country, of which this drawing shows but one segment, gave one an excellent comprehension of the "lay of the land" north of Toul. And although it was never bristhng with the evidence of war, the occasions were rare when one could not see the smoke of distant shell-fire, or far above the distant hills observe the puffs of bursting shrapnel where some "archie" was bent on stopping the progress of a scouting airman.  WAGONS AND TENTS THIS drawing shows a field encampment near Menil-Ia-Tour which in its confusion of wagons and tents is suggestive of the old-time pictures of bivouacs in our Civil War. Except at the front, where concealment was imperative, the pictorial aspect of troops and convoys and encampments was probably not so different from what it was in the earlier wars, before long- range guns and aeroplanes widened the zone of danger and made us hide our- selves under chicken wire and burlap and paint ourselves protectively. For all that, the old-fashioned hand-to-hand fighting has not yet gone out of style. [i6] A VIEW OF BEAUMONT BEFORE our troops were rushed to Cantigny and the Marne to help stop the German drive toward Paris, Beaumont was the storm center of what was at that time considered an active sector. Northwest of Toul, it was approached by way of the Menil-Ia-Tour road, through Ausau- ville and Mandres. Beyond Mandres the road grew "hot" and reached the high point of adventure at about half way between Mandres and Beaumont, at a curve in the road which, because of its "unhealthy" atmosphere and the resulting casualties, became known as "Dead Man's Corner." As an approach to Beaumont it offered a sort of sporting element to the occasional visitor in search of thrills, but for the business of bringing up supplies it was a serious matter. And especially, too, as the shelling of this particular spot on the road occurred regularly with the approach of a convoy or any tempting target. The story goes that "Dead Man's Corner" continued to be deadly until a certain "priest" was caught signalhng the German lines from a church tower by means of the hands of a clock. After that the road was usually safe. The view of Beaumont shown here is from the west of this once perilous corner and shows the back of the village and looking m the direction of the German lines.  ^5?rw^ - ^ ''< -, RUINS IN RAMBUCOURT THE effect of shell-fire on architecture is based on a combination of violence plus the distance from the front. Some day an idle scientist will plot a curve which will start with the dust of a village in No-man's Land and end, let us say, in type XL-io, or the single penetration in the only house struck in a town x-kilometers from the firing hne. Between these two extremes there are ruins covering every shade and degree of destruction and as clearly significant of their distance from the enemy as milestones. In the Toul sector, this theory of miles and demolition was open to proof to even the most casual observer. Starting with the occasional markings of the night- flying Hun, and advancing through Menil-Ia-Tour, Ausauville, Mandres and into Beaumont, the houses became more and more shattered, more and more roofless, and proportionately unsafe. Beyond Beaumont, in Seicheprey, the houses were without roofs, just so many jagged wafls, while in the distance out in No-man's Land, there were neither roofs nor walls, but piles of masonry that looked like tombstones, and indeed were the tombstones of dead and vanished villages. [i8] pi?¥TS5(^5*P»^' A COMPANY BILLET THE doughboy's private opinion of billets would probably look crude in print. Describing the average one would impoverish his vast fund of profanity. And you can hardly blame him. There were, no doubt, billets and billets, but it is safe to assume that all of them were open to comparison only in terms of varying degrees of discomfort. A truly comfortable billet was probably unknown; and although the word comfort is a relative one, the word discomfort (in the advance zone of the army) was, at any rate, open to but one interpretation. It meant the state of being uncomfortable, and this, for more than one reason, since there are sure to be at least two, and usually several more. Ask any cootied soldier.  AN ARMY KITCHEN THE army cook seemed to have had a knack of making his immediate surroundings home-like. It may have been because of the comforting smell of food, or the sight of pots and pans and the huge corrugated ash barrels steaming with chow and coffee. And although he may not have always held an enviable position and had to suffer the ungracious labors of dis- gruntled "K. Ps.," there must have been occasions, perhaps three times a day, when he was looked upon with great favor, assuming, of course, that he was indeed a cook. And most of them were, in a whole-hearted sort of way. At any rate, they served their long files of hungry "boarders" with speed, and they served them hot, which is the secret of serving army food, and also the secret of eating it.  THE BILLET BEAUTIFUL IT is an open question whether or not the average doughboy was insensible to the beauties of France. Certainly the sum total of his impressions must have stood on the plus side of beauty rather than on the minus, provided, of course, he had the leisure to weigh his thoughts on the matter and a vision that could see beyond the mud, dust, manure, cooties and other distractions of the ideal military life. Far enough behind the lines and beyond the mental disturbance of air-raids and artillery fire, he no doubt enjoyed moments of aesthetic exhilaration, and it is safe to venture that even then these higher impulses were prompted by the reaction of a full stomach, sun- shine, and the enjoyment of an occasional hour of play. But rest billets, as a rule, belied their name and resulted (no doubt through the far-sighted machination of the officers of the Staff) in giving rise to a restlessness that made a return to the front something to be earnestly desired. Here, though, is pictured a place which must have made at least a slight impression of loveliness on even the most hardened and indifferent young warrior. It has a stage-like setting of prettiness. But more appealing to the practical Yank was the soft sun-baked meadow grass which formed the mattress of his pup- tent, the meadow itself with its opportunity for baseball, and best of all a (so-called) river for bathing, while within easy walking distance was a small town with paved streets, sidewalks, shops, and things to buy and eat. What more could a doughboy want?  A SADDLER'S ROOM THE same fortunes of war and billeting that gave to a division com- mander for his headquarters the luxury of a chateau and furnished him with a night's rest among soft linens and feathers, and placed above his troubled head a canopy of gorgeous brocade, would occasionally lift the doughboy out of the mud into drier and more spacious quarters. The mon- astery at Rangeval was just such a place where from out of a wallow of wetness one could step on to firm pavements, along echoing corridors and into spacious apartments. This drawing shows one room in this huge sanctu- ary, a massive vaulted chamber, solemn and impressive, and before the American occupation was used, no doubt, for some somber purpose. Under the reign of Doughboy the First, it became a saddler's room, and although in this drawing the saddler himself is shown in an attitude suggestive of prayer, it is more Hkely that his pose has nothing to do with his thoughts. As a matter of fact, the general trend of his discourse, as I recall it, was a protest, uttered without reservations, on the wide-world carelessness of leather-using men and beasts, with a special reference to army men and army beasts, together with a mild inquiry regarding the duration of wars.  A BARRACK STREET IN contrast with the slow and deliberate thoroughness that characterized the building operations of the French, our method of tossing buildings together overnight exposed a variance in national temperaments that on more than one occasion tried the patience of the hustling Yanks and put a big strain on the indomitable pohteness of the French. We, a nation of people everlastingly in a hurry, were on this occasion more than ever in haste. We could hardly wait for the completion of those formal and unhurried trans- actions with the French authorities that would precede the signal for us to begin our operations. We lost no time. We would pounce upon a strip of ground and, before the wondering gaze of a deliberate people, transform it with unbehevable rapidity into a wide-spreading village of barracks and shops and storehouses. This drawing shows a typical barrack street in one of our hurry-up settlements. This one is at Is-sur-Tille, but there were miles and miles of others just like it, with occasionally a row of trees to reheve their unbroken ugliness. Whatever beauty there was in France halted at the gates of these American emergency-built towns.  A MONASTERY BILLET IT would be curious to know, if walls could speak, just what impression the profane bantering of healthy doughboys made upon the sacred cells in the old monastery at Rangeval. Probably none at all, since, previous to the American occupation, these buildings were, from time to time, used by French troops, and so these hallowed walls had their opportunity to grow accustomed to the harmless violence of soldier talk long before American words took the place of French. The setting, though, of callous military youths, crowded eight to a room where once but one saintly mortal existed in silent prayer and meditation, was a curious one to contemplate. A little later these buildings were put to a more fitting use; the place became a field hospitaf, and with the red cross flying from it, it must have felt itself restored to its former dignity.  "LAME DUCKS" NOT the least part of an aerodrome is the junk heap, and for that matter, the graveyard, too, although the jest seems a cruel one. The aviators, who know the frailty of machines and men, were inclined to lump these two burial grounds together; and so little did they allow the solemnity of death to affect them that on an inspection of the aviation fields at Issou- dun they would point out to you the nine fields that marked the progressive flights of flying, from ground flutterings to stunting, and then with grim humor, point to the cemetery as "Field No. lo." This callous disregard for the finer sensibihties of feeling was a protection necessary to safeguard the saneness of an aviator's mind, where, in the process of making men into birds, machines crashed daily and the toll of casualties was often appalhng. This drawing shows a few remnants of machines that will never again lift their wheels into the blue. Shorn of their wings, crumpled and dented, they lay outside a repair shop and underwent a slow process of demolition by mechanics who took from them, bit by bit, some fragment that might be used again to rebuild some less shattered plane.  A REPAIR SHOP AT ISSOUDUN THE confidence that one may have in the strength of an aeroplane is apt to undergo a shock when one sees these frail creatures, in a repair shop, stripped of the covering of cloth and paint that gives to their graceful bodies such an appearance of solidity. This feehng of mistrust is increased when, instead of a single machine, one looks through a whole row of these skeletons ; you feel your vision swimming through a maze of tiny struts and wires and braces, until you lose all sense of their sohdity and believe your- self to be contemplating the ghosts of shattered planes. This drawing is of a repair shop at Issoudun.  A GATEWAY TO THE FRONT TO have told the Yank who spent his days in mud wallows and slept in some reinforced corner of a shattered dwelling which threatened with every shell-burst to tumble its walls about his ears, that his surroundings were picturesque would have probably evoked from him a comment that would have been one-tenth increduhty and nine-tenths profanity. The fight- ing Yank was not at the front to admire his surroundings, and if the casual visitor, in a neat uniform and pohshed leather, should see him in a setting capable of provoking a pleasant reaction in the mind of a detached observer, well, that was none of his business. This drawing, though, is offered as evidence of the fact that "above the mud and scum of things" there was occasional beauty in the ugljness of the doughboy's customary abode. It was made among the ruins of the village of Rambucourt, and shows a communi- cation trench leading to the front lines. Between the timbers that support a now tileless roof is a netting of camouflage intended to veil the movement of traffic along the road upon which the house faces.  AN AMERICAN GRAVEYARD IT was characteristic of the Yank, and proof of his healthy courage, to think lightly of death. And this, too, in spite of the fact that it stalked him twenty-four hours a day, and appeared to him in as many forms as disease and modern warfare could invent. But beneath the pretense of indifference, the expression of the loss of a "buddie" was, perhaps, more commonly uttered in a vow for vengeance. And to those to whom, in the heat of battle, the opportunity came it is safe to assume that many an account was settled. This drawing shows what was probably the first American graveyard in France; it is on the edge of Menil-Ia-Tour, the small village north of Toul which served as our first divisional headquarters. The sketch was made at a time when American cemeteries were rare in France. Our forces at that time were comparatively small, and we had not yet tasted the fuller fury of war and the toll that it exacts. This was to come later; and one needs but to travel behind the sweep of our battle lines, or to the many more peaceful enclosures near our base hospitals, to know what our assurance of hberty has cost us.  ^■s. '^--^^s^* r' ■'•^^^ P^ ? ''«T'^ nr^ft^-^s: «'<&k<^M.;:-S IL " ; ♦ >»*^"*^ "^-^v . "y-* ■.«/'*', >^[^^ >«% -■■^iS ■<iitimf>»-iifi',^^ . _^ -^^ _ AN UNSAFE BILLET IN RAMBUCOURT HOUSES whose windows opened on to a view of No-man's Land had a way, sooner or later, of losing their windows and roofs, and for that matter, everything but their cellars. Even these were open to a general shake-up by ^neans of a direct hit. And yet in spite of all that they must have faced, some houses were lucky enough to preserve the semblance of their former selves. Here is one that looked at the enemy for four years, and although battle-scarred it still possesses the essential elements of a domestic residence, which is more than one can say of ninety per cent of the houses on the firing line.  py|g! THE SHELTER OF A CHURCH HERE is a church which, robbed of its spiritual usefulness, continued, nevertheless, to render bodily shelter. To the distinct elements of church architecture, war and its proximity to the firing line gave to this church an architectural appendage in the form of a massive skirting of masonry that encircled the apse and with a roof of heavy timbers and galvan- ized iron, earth and stone, formed a snug shelter against bursting shells. Connected with it was a communication trench which, before a war that did not discriminate between ecclesiastical and domestic architecture, would strike one as a strange way indeed to go to church. [30I A RAILHEAD DUMP THE word "dump," like so many other war- requisitioned words, was par- ticularly fitting for the designation of a storage depot at the front. It suggests the hurried and disorderly delivery of supplies brought up by trains that dared go no farther, the hasty unloading of them, and the stacking of the various boxes and bales in scattered heaps which, to the casual observer, seemed more the result of the enemy's airbombs than the (more or less) organized plan of the Depot Quartermaster. Prominent in this picture is a mountain of baled straw in the process of being covered with canvas against the inevitable rains ; other heaps of suppHes are being similarly pro- tected, while on the left, along the siding, is a wood pile; and although the drawing does not show it, it is safe to assume that this pile, hke other precious wood piles up and down the hne, is being guarded against petty larceny by a specially appointed sentry.  A REGIMENT AT MESS A REGIMENT on the way to the front is seen halted for mess, the most welcome of all interruptions to the day's march that a hot, weary and dust-covered soldier can look forward to. This setting of barns and sheds is an unattractive one, but the shade of the buildings offered some protection from the sun's heat, and besides, the official regimental records, as far as I know, have never yet listed a protest regarding the time, place and general surroundings in which a mess was served; it is the unofficial and unrecorded protests that dealt, primarily, with the time, place and general surroundings where a mess was not served.  AT NEVERS AS a spectacle of our fighting efforts, taken as a whole, it would be hard to say which was the more impressive — the dramatic deeds of our com- ^ bat troops or the vast and varied accomphshments of labor and produc- tion by the men who stood in back of them. The curse and virtue of war is the glamour that it attaches to the doing of heroic deeds, and for that reason the unheroic acts of drudgery are passed by unsung and leave unglorified some equally gallant youth whom circumstance denied the opportunity for the proof of his courage. And so, far back from the harvest line of our war crosses and citations for bravery, there were many stout hearts wearing over- alls. The railroad that led to the front covered miles of unheroic drudgery, days and nights of persistent labor by men whose union hours was the union of service between themselves and their brothers at the front. And together they did the trick. The drawing shows one of these obscure corners of labor; it is the yard of a huge locomotive repair shop at Nevers. The building in the foreground had first to be completed by us before we could equip it for work. It is one example of the tremendous tasks that were accomplished behind the lines.  afsiH»wjKi->ji.^w,'iJWw>i"i''"i"i'i'*''*'**'W^*'*""'*i*Joy*pi' ri i lit lfclurMnj > Miuii»u » -j « i i. u. ASSEMBLING LIBERTY PLANES A NYONE who was forced to taste the anguish of scrambling for shelter, /•\ or had to "play possum," or in any way suffered the uneasiness pro- ^ ^ voked by the hovering presence of a Boche plane that enjoyed unre- stricted air privileges, had every reason to smile with bitterness at that wild boast we made of filhng the skies of France with Liberty planes. In time, of course, the sight of our cockade of red, blue and white on the under planes of machines did become more frequent; but there was still lots of room in the air for more. Ask any front-line man. At Romorantin a vast camp with rows of barracks and longer rows of shops was built for the job of assembling the Liberty planes as fast as they arrived. Once assembled, they were tested in flight and then "ferried" to the front.  i^yiflA: '^0^ i^l^-^ AT THE CAMOUFLAGE FACTORY THE art of camouflage made such an appeal to the imagination of the American public that it not only adopted this fuII-sounding word as a slang expression, but countless people with no more knowledge of the art than one can get second-handed and three thousand miles from the Western Front fifled columns of print and the hollow spaces of lecture halls with marvelous accounts of this new factor in modern warfare. Ninety per cent of it was rot. At the front, although many ingenious devices and tricks had, from time to time, been employed, camouflage consisted chiefly of the screening of gun emplacements and roads by the use of wire netting covered with burlap and raffia, or by the direct employment of tree branches. Guns, motor trucks and other conspicuous pieces of war furniture were painted in three or four colors in a sort of gigantic pattern of shapes resembling the fragments of a jig-saw puzzle. In our camouflage factory at Dijon, where this sketch was made, the greater part of the manufacture of camouflage materials was done by women refugees under the supervision of our soldiers and officers.  SAUMUR THIS is a drawing of one of the main buildings of the famous French cavalry school at Saumur which was given over to our use as an artillery school. Here the candidates for commissions received the laborious instructions that would eventually quahfy them as masters of guns, and send them forth to form one more source of trouble and unrest for the Knights of Kultur.  IN THE SALVAGE DEPOT AT ST. PIERRE-DES-CORPS A NY man who has had the sorry job of being a supply officer knows the /-V anguish and the exceedingly rare moments of trmmphant satisfaction ^ ^ that attended his efforts to keep his men in clothing and equipment. The uniform neatness that is expected of soldiers is accepted as part and parcel of military discipline; but it does not in the least make it easier for the supply officer. He is everlastingly being pestered with demands for new boots, new breeches, and new this and that, and a wire-torn and tattered company of men were continually expecting him to produce for them rai- ments regardless of time or place. Many of our men at the front resembled the proverbial hobo with the sfight difference of being in khaki instead of the usual assorted tatters. And many a stalwart soldier returning from an excur- sion into a wire-tangled No-man's Land has put his whole faith in the holding-power of one pin. Although the supply officer's troubles did not end (they never do), they were, at least, made fighter by the increased efficiency of the organization devoted to the distribution of clothing and equipment and its repair. This, in an army of two milfion men, was a tremendous under- taking. This drawing shows one corner of a huge building in the salvage depot at St. Pierre-des-Corps where everythmg but the doughboy himself could be mended and again put into service.  A FARM AT SAVENAY WHEN the doughboy was not fighting or doing kitchen police or some other task that made him wonder why he had been given a gun and taught to shoot it, he was a farmer. The occasion, though, was not so frequent as to weaken our Hnes. And yet there were enough vegetable patches to be seen in our camp areas to justify the General Order from G. H. Q. which brought these "Liberty Gardens" into existence. The drawing shows some- thing much more pretentious than the scattered patches of weeds and vege- tables that one associates with the agricultural efforts of the A. E. F. This is almost a real farm. It was used in connection with the large base hospital at Savenay, and served not only to furnish the hospital mess with fresh vegetables but it offered employment to convalescent soldiers who were not yet well enough to go back again to war. The center house, in the back- ground, served as the farm superintendent's headquarters and contained a "ward" of about eight beds for a squad of temporary farm hands. Against the horizon can be seen the long roof line of the hospital itself, a group of attractive-looking buildings which, before the war and our arrival in France, was a schoolhouse.  A REFRIGERATING PLANT FRANCE, of the A. E. F., like Gaul, was divided into three parts: The Base Section, the Intermediate Section, and the Advance Section. Later, and sooner than most of us dreamed possible, a fourth was added . . . but that was in Germany. Generally speaking, these three zones might be designated as the areas of arrival, storage, and consumption. Sooner or later the river of all our efforts emptied into the front Hnes, where it could best be seen and felt by our incredulous enemy. This drawing was made in the Inter- mediate Section at Gievres, where on a prairie of sand, sprinkled with spindly oaks, we created a huge storage depot, one of those unsightly settlements of rapid growth composed of avenues of raw wooden barracks, and warehouses as long as a city block. This particular view shows the refrigerating plant, a colossal establishment that was either a world's record among ice plants or came very near being one. Anyway, it was large enough to make you marvel, especially when you looked at its ponderous equipment of compressors and other machinery and reahzed that, like the doughboy, it had all successfully run the gantlet of the ruthless subs.  AN OBSERVATION BALLOON THE observation balloon, called by the French a "sausage," deserves a better name. It is far too animate in appearance to be named after a more or less inanimate thing. With its great gray body silently swaying between heaven and earth, its nose in the wind, and with its red, white and blue cockade looking for all the world hke a watchful eye, it impressed you as being, perhaps, some Martian monster, a cross between a gigantic elephant and a whale. It is a clumsy, helpless creature with the hopeless ambition to be invisible. While in the air its huge body looms up as the biggest spot on the horizon, and it was the constant prey of the balloon-hunting aeroplane, and the target of every ambitious artillery man. And in its desire to appear inconspicuous, it was even more pathetic when you came upon it in the clear- ing of a wood, or in a field among a scattering of trees ; here, partially deflated, you found it with its belly squashed to the earth, the most humble of God's creatures. The drawing shows one of these timid monsters on its way to the front, and hesitating at a crossroad.  IN REHERRY IF it were not for mud, rain, and more rain, dirt, manure, cooties, air-raids, shell-fire, gas, and this whole pack of miseries encumbered with military duties, and enveloped by the depressing presence of a seemingly endless war, it is quite possible that many of the French villages in which the dough- boy found himself invited to rest would prove, under more joyous circum- stances, to be (as the guide books put it) "quaint and picturesque." But the doughboy's day was without time for aesthetic contemplation; and yet, if he had but lifted his eyes half way between the mud and a visiting enemy plane, it is quite probable that he would have found himself confronted with some- thing that might have stirred in him a momentary appreciation of old-time loveliness. The village of Reherry, near Baccarat, offered him this chance.  A HOUSE IN BADONVILLER PERHAPS a better title for this drawing, and one that would apply equally as well for the picture of any house in Badonviller occupied by our troops, would be "Life Among the Ruins." For this shattered town in the Baccarat sector received its baptism of fire very early in the war, and after being buffeted by the flow and ebb of the enemy's invasion, the war settled itself for a long stay on its northern outskirts and thereafter devoted itself to the destruction of the town in a leisurely manner. Although Badon- viller was the entrance to our trench Hues at this point, it enjoyed days of uninterrupted quiet. But there was no fixed rule of tranquilhty, and as a place of residence there was no one quarter of the town that would recom- mend itself above another for safety. Accordingly, our men were billeted in cellars, and in the daytime would emerge from their damp quarters, and, if they happened to be at leisure, disport themselves among the fallen debris and enjoy life to whatever degree that fife was enjoyable under such circum- stances. This drawing shows such a family group on an "outing" in front of a house with a hole that illustrates the power of destruction in one exploding shell.  AT MONTDIDIER THE first phase of the German "Peace OfTensive" which was launched in March, 1 91 8, and had for its object a sphtting apart of the French and British armies and a general victorious clean-up, was halted within a few miles of Amiens. Although a terrific blow to the confidence we had felt in the strength of our AHied forces, it served to estabhsh a unity of command with General Foch in supreme authority. Following his appointment at this most critical time, came General Pershing's offer of all that we had in men and materials. It was a thrilhng event and marked a turning point in our activities. It heralded our entrance into the "Big Fight," and lifted our First Division out of the Toul trenches and placed them, for the first time, in a position for open warfare and in front of Montdidier at the very point of the German salient. The drawing shows a street in Montdidier with the Hotel de Ville on the right, badly battered, but still standing. Architecturally, the building is ornate and heavy . . . and Teutonic, which may account for its preservation.  A BASE HOSPITAL BASE hospitals varied architecturally^ from extensive three and four storied school houses and public buildings to a string of white tents. Between these two extremes it is safe to say that every kind of house, provided it was spacious and airy, was employed for the care of our sick and wounded. The drawing shows one located on the boundary between base hospitals and evacuation hospitals. It was located at Bazoille; and although it started with the occupation of a rather modern-looking chateau, attended by a medical unit from Johns Hopkins, it soon grew, with the addition of new units, in an amazing manner, extending itself into long train-like rows of wooden ward buildings which ended in hnes of canvas tents, crossed the Meuse and the highway and sprouted again in more rows of tents and wooden buildings. From the road that rises in the direction of Neufchateau, one could look down on to the pleasant sight of these neat lines of houses set in green pastures; and at night the whole valley was a basin of twinkhng lights, the gayest sight in all that country of ordered darkness. But if you happened to be there at the moment when the siren screamed a warning of an approach- ing air-raider, you would have seen a thousand lights go out at once, and felt your eyes swim with the shock of sudden darkness.  CANTIGNY THE taking of Cantigny on May 28th, 191 8, was our opening bow in the "Big Show." Up to that time we had been doing an extensive guard duty along so-called quiet sectors beyond Toul, and in trenches. But in the Montdidier sector we came out of ground and had our first taste of open warfare and real fighting. Our First Division, which was given this position of honor, celebrated the occasion by launching the first American offensive, with Cantigny as the target. The affair was a huge success. But the Germans did not hke it; they protested with a perfect hell of shell-fire and gas. But it did no good ... we had come to stay. At the end of this dispute over which of us should have Cantigny, there, was very little of Cantigny to have. The drawing will verify this statement. The sketch was made in the direction in which our troops made their attack, and it shows to some extent the advantage that the possession of this town had, situated, as it was, on a hill, over troops that were dug-in below it. And that IS exactly why we took it.  CRASHED REGARDING the virtues or weaknesses of our Liberty planes, it was difficult to get any definite opinion. Although every aviator had some- thing to say on the subject, it seemed as if no two could agree. There were those extremists who persistently denied their existence, those who conceded their existence but only on the evidence of a rumor, and those who had met some one who claimed to have actually seen one in flight, and so, by varying degrees of decreasing pessimism upward to the most optimistic dec- laration of their great nurribers in France and their remarkable capabilities. This drawing is, perhaps, an argument on the negative side; although the pilot of this machine claimed that the motor failed to support him, and forced him to land among furrows that tripped him on to his nose, I, having witnessed the caprices of these frail birds of wood and linen, decided on this occasion to keep aloof from argument, and contented myself merely in recording the rather unusual pose of this plane, leaving the reason for its attitude to those who know much more about flying and landing than I do.  ■»■• "°"^""^^^a^*i^ "■■■■■■ f^'V- A MOTOR TRAIN CONCEALED THE rather habitual supremacy of the air which the Germans enjoyed during the long interval of waiting which our men at the front suffered while that boast of "ten thousand planes in France" failed to material- ize made day-travel a rather precarious undertaking in back of the hnes, while at the immediate front it was out of the question. The spying enemy planes would signal the artillery and the immediate dehvery of shells put an end to a convoy's progress. Accordingly, our forces, preceding an attack, kept themselves under cover in the daylight and did their digging and truck- ing under the protection of darkness. This sketch shows a supply train that has parked along a roadside under the shelter of trees, and has in addition been screened by a veritable hedge of tree branches and sapHngs. In the woods, against which these trucks were Hned, was the encampment of the train's personnel. These wooded bivouacs offered our men the opportunity of a wide scope of ingenuity in the building of their shelters, and by stretching their shelter-halves between trees, and with a thatching of leaves, and with bunks made of springy saplings, the more energetic men contrived for them- selves huts that had, or seemed to have, all the appearance of comfort.  A REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS ARMY headcjuarters afforded an interesting study; they were as different as their distance from the firing line. The pomp and polish of General ^ Headquarters faded into the less garnished military procedure and neatness as you went from Divisional headquarters to Brigade headcjuarters and so on down the Hnes, always nearer the bursting shells, into Regimental headquarters, and from there to Battalion headquarters and the zone of machine-gun fire and other forms of sudden death. Architecturally, the same progression was evident; you passed from a cluster of four-storied barrack buildings through rich men's chateaux, farm buildings, peasants' huts, to a hole in the mud twenty feet below air level. The drawing shows one of these just one step removed from the subway type. It was Colonel Neville's "home," on the edge of Belleau Wood, in "la Maison Blanche" during those days of hot fighting in June, 191 8. And the fact that the Germans knew its exact location, and were in the habit of showing that they did, made it a rather exciting abode.  A WOOD ENCAMPMENT PRECEDING the days of an offensive, the roads along the front, in the daytime, were so empty and so quiet (if you discounted the sounds of guns) that travel along them gave you, at times, a positive pang of loneliness. Except for an occasional M. P. at a crossroad, who stopped you in order to examine your papers (from what I thought was often a desire on his part for human intercourse and companionship rather than from a sense of duty) you seemed to be travehng in a deserted land, the undisturbed emptiness of which made you sometimes wonder if the speed of your motor had not carried you to a point where the next M. P. would be a German. The fields on either side of the road were bare of life, but if you stopped at a place where the road cut through a patch of woods, and parted the screen of branches that faced the highway, you would find, much to your surprise, that the whole place was swarming with troops, the encampment of a whole regiment, hidden under a canopy of leaves against the all-seeing eye of enemy aeroplanes.  IN BELLEAU WOOD OUR fight in Belleau Wood opened the eyes of our Allies as well as our enemy to a reahzation of the full significance of our entrance into the war. To our aid in money and materials it added the first proof of the threat of our arms. To the Germans who came in actual conflict with our men, the ferocity of our fighting was an astounding revelation of the trans- formation of a people whom they had been taught to sneer at as money- hoarding pacifists. Sheltered behind moss-covered bowlders, and screened by a veritable jungle of trees and saphngs, the Germans poured the deadly stream of their machine-gun fire into the advancing waves of slender youths in khaki who were stopped only by death or mortal wounds, or who came on unafraid, and with bayonet and rifle butt silenced forever the astounded veterans of the "Lord of War." This drawing gives one an idea of the thick- ness of growth through which our men had to fight. In the foreground is "battalion headquarters," a dug-out which was a Httle more spacious and architecturally pretentious than the grave-like holes which formed the duck- ing shelters of the men when shells began to fall. On a tree in easy reach of the "front door" of battahon headquarters is the horn which sounded the warning of a gas attack.  AN ADVANCE DRESSING STATION WAR hospitals were seldom the white-enameled, ghstening havens of sanitation and blessedness that we were inclined to imagine them — that is, if we formed our idea of them from salon paintings of dainty, white-shrouded, red-crossed angels of mercy, bending over mummy-wrapped heroes three-quarters submerged in snow-white bedding and glorified by shafts of golden sunhght. Nothing Hke that. To the average wounded soldier, a bed with a mattress, pillow, and sheets (white or near-white) was all of heaven that he needed. He could dispense (for a while at least) with the enamel finish and the sanitary angels. It was just as well, too, since the chances were that he would not get them; not, at least, until he had been "evacuated" two or three times and landed in a base hospital with white walls, cute nurses, and cut flowers. Field hospitals are too mobile to go in for interior decorations, and usually too busy to keep out flies and disorder. They are clearing houses for the newly wounded . . . somber places with a somber business. But along the route that leads from the battlefield to the distant base hospitals there is no more impressive spot than the first halting place of the wounded, the advance dressing station. This drawing shows one of these near Belleau Wood. It was along the day-path that led to the wood, a sort of gufly that divided the fields at this point, and the dressing station was established under a culvert where the road crossed the guHy. Its approach along the narrow trail that led to it was marked by a sad fitter of discarded equipment, torn clothing, broken blood-stained stretchers, rifles, pierced and dented helmets, while over the ground were strewn letters . . . home letters, most of them which, in this dismal place of suffering and desperate need, spun their thread of contact three thousand miles away to where anxious people read bufletins and waited in duH suspense to have their fears abated.  A BELLEAU FARM THIS cluster of buildings is on the outskirts of the village of Belleau and was in the path of our advance after we had cleared Belleau Wood and started forward with the general movement on July i8th, 191 8, which marked the turning point of the war. In the foreground are seen German outpost positions facing Belleau Wood, while in back are a shattered dovecot and a few fluttering doves which had, no doubt, every reason to question the benevolence of a fate that would raise such havoc with the symbol- ism of peace for which they had so persistently stood.  LUCY-LA-BOCAGE THE magnitude of destruction that the war has accomplished, and the thousands of pictures of this vast devastation that have passed before our eyes, have dulled our true appreciation of its awfulness. We have been surfeited with tales of horror and suffering until we are inclined to sum up our impressions of the total of these miseries and the mass of all this wide- spread destruction in a sort of blur of crumbled masonry and humbled humanity. But the supreme pitifulness of it is not evident to us until we have been brought into contact with some concrete example of what this loss and destruction mean. One could have no more impressive revelation of the fullness and bitterness of all this than the sight of refugees returning to their homes, to find their houses not only hopelessly smashed but more often entirely vanished in a pile of stone and timbers. I have seen old men and women, standing before the crumpled fragments of their homes, speechless and dazed, and in an attitude of utter despair. It was a sight that was pathetic beyond words. Lucy-Ia-Bocage is one of the villages south-west of Chateau- Thierry, which was in the wake of the German drive for Paris. When, not more than a month later, the tide of battle turned back, it left the place in ruins. This drawing shows one view of the town that greeted the returning villagers.  Lkc«< ' 1« - ^c^^l V/| **> '')'^ TORCY AFTER we had planted ourselves, outside of Chateau-Thierry, in front of the German wave that for the second time threatened to engulf Paris, ^ we found ourselves face to face with the test of our abihty as fighters. General Pershing had so instilled into our men and officers the spirit of agres- siveness that we were not content on this occasion to use our strength merely defensively as a dam against the flood of German ambition. Instead, we started right in by clearing Belleau Wood, capturing Bouresches, and making a neat job of the taking of Vaux. After that we were content to rest until, following the Germans' failure, on July 15th, to resume their march toward Paris, we advanced on the i8th in the general movement toward Soissons, which heralded the first step in Marshal Foch's gradual process of "rofling up the map." The village of Torcy and its neighbor, Belleau, fell to us on that day. The drawing shows the southern outskirts of the village and the ground our men traversed in taking their prize.  riifiiffii-TimrTfOTnii nnri •< BOURESCHES THIS drawing was made in the main square of the village of Bouresches, which, situated on the edge of Belleau Wood, marked the southernmost line of the wedge which the Germans had driven past Chateau-Thierry in their last push for Paris. This village, like others in the path of an enemy that was striding toward its goal at the rate of twenty to thirty kilometers a day, suffered from the sudden fury of war and had to endure the ebb and flow of fighting that marked, at this spot, the turning point of this tremendous conflict. No more impressive sign of its destruction could be found than the sight of the huge tree that at one time must have been the pride of the village. Its great branches severed, its trunk splintered and imbedded with shell fragments, it was literally killed by sheH-fire. Bouresches was occupied by our forces at a time when it was stifl a new sensation for us to be stalking villages and capturing them. A httle later we took Vaux with the neatness and dispatch of veterans, and from then on viflage- taking became a habit.  VAUX VAUX is an impressive example of American military efficiency. It was the first all-American experiment in ousting a tenacious enemy, and its success was complete although it cost the destruction of a village. But at that time, and under the circumstances of the force of the German thrust toward Paris, the price of a village, more or less, was hardly worth consider- ing. So, in capturing the place we did not hesitate to make a thorough job of it. The attack was planned in minute detail; through our intelfigence section we were able to learn the ins and outs of the town, the exact location of the houses whose cellars would offer the best shelter to the shell-hunted Huns. Postcards, old photographs, and the information of refugees enabled us to instruct the attacking forces in such detail that when in the wake of an artil- lery storm, which in its fullness and accuracy drummed every square yard of the town, they were able, with only slight resistance, to reap the harvest of prisoners in the very places in which we expected they would most certainly be found.  .«-'-• -■w^.'CW*'^ - A ROLL CALL AFTER BATTLE ANYONE who had the opportunity of traveling back and forth between the front to the remote districts of our Services of Supplies could not ^ help but observe a state of contrasting desires among the officers as well as the men. Those who had never been under fire were longing, heart and soul, for the opportunity to taste the thrill of it, while those who for days had survived the hell of battle and bombardment were longing, heart and soul, for the moment of their release. Which of these two was the more sincere expres- sion is open to speculation. The drawing shows the encampment of a battal- ion of marines, near Belleau Wood, enjoying relaxation from the strain of fighting. For the first time since their withdrawal from a zone which dis- courages close formations, these men were lined up for roll call.  REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS AT GRAND BALLIOS THE word "front" was comparative. It meant one thing to the man whose work was well in back of the lines and who believed himself to be at the front when he was within sound of the guns, and it meant quite another thing to the doughboy who stood separated from the enemy by a few lumps of dirt and a tangle of wire. A compromise between these two interpretations would estabhsh this front zone as a strip of land that was measured by the depth of danger; and although it would primarily include the reach of the enemy's artillery fire, it should also take into consideration the areas exposed to air-raids. Add to this the distant places in the range of "Big Berthas" and "Mystery Guns" and you have a front the depth of which eludes exact measurement. And yet, the actual front was a wall that was unmistakable and which loomed up clear enough in one's consciousness when a point was reached where gas masks had to be worn in the "alert position," like a bib, and precaution made it necessary for one to walk single file through newly shelled fields at intervals of about a hundred feet between oneself and one's nearest companion. This drawing, which has an aspect of sunny tran- quillity, is of a group of farm buildings surrounding a courtyard which served as Colonel Dorey's headquarters near Chateau-Thierry, and which was near enough the front to make its approach a cautious undertaking. In the tower, which served as an excellent point of observation, a man can be seen watching for messages which were flashed to him from the edge of a wood that looked down upon the city of Chateau-Thierry.  jg;^'^4«iw*'V~,i A VIEW OF CHATEAU'THIERRY IN connection with this "World War," the name of Chateau-Thierry will forever stand in our memories as the proving ground of American valor. The long months of watchfulness in our trenches in the Vosges, the sharp and bitter struggle at Seicheprey, the show of splendid courage and fighting at Cantigny which marked our first encounter with the Germans on their way to Paris, all these were overshadowed by the triumph of our faith in our arms when we put our untried strength to the fullest test against the Chateau- Thierry salient, and found it not unworthy of our highest hopes. In our minds thereafter, we saw Chateau-Thierry as the gate which, held by our unfailing strength, barred the Germans from their hopes of victory and peace. And although they made one more effort to break this barrier, it failed ; and when this gate was opened again it swung wide to give way to the charge of our triumphant forces in pursuit of a beaten enemy. Chateau-Thierry was the flood-gate that marked the turning of the war. The drawing gives one an idea of the location of the city in its setting of hills. The River Marne is not visible, but is marked by the line of taller buildings above the row of trees in the center of the picture.  THE BRIDGE AT CHATEAU-THIERRY THE bridge was destroyed by the French in June, 191 8, as an obstacle against the German advance when, for the second time, the enemy made its drive toward Paris. It spanned the Marne in three arches and carried the roadway which, had it not been for the superb resistance of our Seventh Machine Gun Battahon of the Third Division, would have opened for the Germans the road to Montmirail and the highway that leads straight to Paris. In the other direction, here pictured, the bridge leads into the center of the city and to the square of the Hotel de Ville, with its steep stairs leading to the terrace and grounds of the long-ago ruined chateau. That the town itself is not much damaged by shell-fire is, perhaps, due to the fact that the chateau grounds are. Again, as in the past, the violence of battle fell chiefly here, and the accuracy of our artillery fire is made evi- dent by the sight of battered walls, fallen trees, and German graves. But the picture-spot of the city was its blown-up bridge, and so important was this bridge as an artery of traffic in the pursuit of the enemy that, no sooner were the Germans out of town, the work was started on clearing away the fallen masonry and spanning the bridge anew with wooden trestles.  GERMAN SHELTERS THE super-soldier of the future, if Kultur had had its way, would have probably developed into a creature resembhng a turreted turtle with the drilling powers of a mole. He could have shot and dug in before he was shot at, and thus satisfy a craving that has been in the heart of almost every soldier, at least once, who has had anything to do with an active battle front. Digging "fox holes" with a bayonet, or mess-kit cover, or the brim of your "tin hat," takes time, and very often ends in a grim failure. Along the wake of a pursuing battle such as followed our counter-offensive in the Chateau-Thierry sector and in our fighting in the Argonne, no more vivid proof is shown of the certain danger into which the soldier must continually advance than by these hurried scratchings in upland fields and sheltered banks. And what meager protection they too often gave was made evident by the sight of an occasional rifle and helmet that marked the spot where some poor boy paid the fuH forfeit of his patriotism. The digging for shelter is a universal practice of self-protection, and the extent of the finished struc- ture depends upon the duration of its occupancy. This drawing shows some of the German dug-outs on the slope of Hill 204 outside of the city of Chateau- Thierry. Some of these lead to deep and spacious holes, while others are barely large enough to aff'ord shelter for one man.  A BRIDGE AT JAULGONNE SO unconsciously do we accept the services of bridges that we give to them no more thought than we do to the foundations of a highway. But find yourself once in a zone that has been traversed by a retreating army and you will be astonished to learn how many bridges there are, or rather were, and how vital their existence is to your progress. To have to choose this road or that one because one bridge is down and another is not, or, worse yet, to find yourself suddenly halted by a chasm marked by pylons and a twisting of cables and beams, and to have to retrace your steps over miles of bumpy roads, makes you have a very high regard for the builders of bridges and a very low one for those who destroy them. The drawing shows the remains of the bridge at Jaulgonne which was blown up in June, 191 8, against the German advance. It marks the approximate location of the junction of our sector (3rd Division) with the French. Just below it, our engineers built a pontoon bridge out of enemy material under enemy fire and labeled it "Made in Germany."  THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE AS an example of the most superb military efficiency, our defense of the Surmelin Valley by the 38th Regiment (3rd Division) under Colonel ^ McAIexander, which resulted in the repulse of the German forces and the total annihilation of the 6th German Grenadiers east of Mezy, stands unrivaled in the records of American fighting. But aside from a demonstra- tion of the tenacity and aggressiveness of our men and methods, this encounter and defeat of the enemy constituted, without doubt, one of the most vital factors in the failure of the enemy's last attempt to smash its way to Paris. This drawing, with its notations, gives one a view of the Marne and the battleground around the village of Mezy. It shows where the Germans under the obscurity of the dim morning light, and behind a veil of smoke, started to cross the Marne. The hail of our artillery and rifle-fire delayed them in their efi^orts to embark, and resulted in the destruction and sinking of at least twenty of their crowded boats. When at last a crossing was effected by the 6th German Grenadiers it was only after every man in the platoon that held the rifle pits on the river bank had given his life in his effort to prevent their landing. And even then, the enemy enjoyed but a short triumph. His advance along the avenue of small trees that opened into the wheat field west of the Mezy church was halted by the viciousness of our attack from the rail- road bank which formed the line of our resistance. Over the embankment the men of Company H poured in three waves, a platoon at a time, and closed with the enemy in a hand-to-hand encounter until the Germans, believing our forces to be in greater numbers than they had anticipated, gave up the fight.  WHERE THE GERMANS CROSSED THE MARNE ANEARER view of the river bank on the Marne where the 6th German Grenadiers finally succeeded in making a crossing. A brief description of this action is given on the preceding page. This drawing shows the village of Charteves in the background, while in the immediate foreground is one of the two-men rifle pits which were dug at intervals along the river bank and formed our first hne of resistance to the approaching enemy. The supreme courage of the men who occupied these pits, and gave their hves in their effort to prevent the enemy's landing, is exemphfied by the cool action of Corporal Connor, who, on the approach of a boatload of Germans, sHpped from the snug protection of his pit and, crouching in the tangle of reeds and bushes, waited until the boat was within his reach. He then pulled it toward him, and before the astounded Germans knew what had happened he had showered them with hand-grenades. That is the story of the failure of one boat to land its Paris-bound passengers.  A VIEW OF MEZY THE drawing was made from the hills on the north bank of the Marne which were occupied by the Germans, and down which they scrambled on the morning of July i6th, 1918, on what they had hoped would be the last leg of their trip to Paris. Across the river can be seen the church in Mezy, while to the left of it is the railroad embankment which formed the chief line of resistance of that dauntless company of the 38th Regiment which utterly routed the 6th German Grenadiers. In the distance can be seen the pleasant hills of pastures and woodland where the Germans had planned to reorganize their forces, after their tempestuous crossing of the Marne, and move forward in an orderly manner toward Montmirail and the high- road that leads by way of Meaux to Paris.  A MOBILE HOSPITAL THE system of medical service for our sick and wounded extended from the huge base hospitals near our ports up through a string of other base hospitals, each a step nearer the front, to the evacuation hospitals, and from these to the field hospitals, dressing stations, advance dressing stations, and so on, out to the foremost firing line where medical officers were assigned to special units. This drawing shows Mobile Hospital Number 39, the "Yale Unit," located, at the time the drawing was made, at Chaillons, where it was stationed in service with the Second Army. To these field hospitals were brought only those men whose wounds were of such a serious nature as to necessitate an immediate operation. The "Mobile" Hospital is an adapta- tion of the French "autochir" a war development whereby the various operating and ward tents with their complete equipment could be struck, set upon trucks and trailers, and be on the road in an hour's time.  A CORNER IN ESSEY THE intricate system of army intelligence robbed modern warfare of the element of surprise. Aside from minor skirmishes and counter-attacks by small units, it is doubtful if any important movement of either army was effected without having been, in some degree, anticipated. The best that [one could hope for was to keep the opponent guessing and, with good luck, trust that he would guess wrong. And although the precautions seemed at times to be too obvious and even ridiculous, nevertheless every effort was made to maintain a secrecy that seemed to ignore the exist- ence of snooping aeroplanes and the mysterious workings of the enemy's system of espionage. Preceding an offensive, along the front and immediately in back of it, everything had the appearance of innocent calm, except that there seemed to be in the air a premonition of something brewing, and officers were apt to wear that guifefess expression that one associates with the face of the small boy with the hidden snow-batl. The M. P.'s were the best indicators of coming trouble. Their vigitance grew more bothersome, and whereas before the roads were open, more or less, to uninterrupted travei, you now found yourself halted at brief intervals and forced to submit to the atways embar- rassing efforts on the part of the M. P. to find a passable resemblance between your face and the representation of it on your identification card. But after the first boom of guns that opened an offensive, the fid of secrecy was off; the roads swarmed with life pressing toward the front, and there was a bustle and confusion which seemed all the more marked because of the calm that had preceded it. The drawing shows a corner in the vitfage of Essey on the second day of the St. Mihiel drive. It pictures merely a small fragment of the endless procession of wagons, motors and men that swarmed the roads on the heels of the Hun-hunting doughboys.  RAMBUCOURT RAMBUCpURT was on our "jumping-off" line in the St. Mihiel drive. Along with its neighbor, the village of Beaumont, it had a reputation for being an unhealthy spot, and many of our men had their first bap- tism of German hate under the doubtful protection of its walls. The German contention that every church tower, from the Cathedral of Rheims to the most humble village spire, was an observation post is only too evident here. With a huge shell-bite in its side, this tower offered an interesting speculation on how long it would withstand the shock of battle. As a matter of fact, it survived, but the church itself and the houses around it seem to be hopelessly beyond repair.  BEYOND SEICHEPREY OUR troops are seen advancing, during the St. Mihiel offensive, into the vast plain which, ever since the Germans took it in the early days of the war, had been dominated by the guns on Mont Sec. With the Germans in retreat, their artillery silenced, our advance into this wide sweep of No-man's Land carried with it more than the thrill of a victorious pursuit; it was a tremendous adventure. After months and months of impatient wait- ing in wet trenches from which the doughboy and the general alike would scowl across untilled fields and plan the capture of this billigerent mountain, we were free at last to scramble above ground and step out with a man's stride into the realization of a dream. Our wish had come true : Mont Sec had fallen and the forbidden fields were now open to us. The drawing shows a German communication trench in the foreground; on the right are companies of infantry trailing across the fields in order to keep the roads open for wheeled traffic. On the left, against the horizon, is Mont Sec.  J^/^W^ OVER NO-MAN'S LAND TO follow an offensive on a battle-map over a staggering of pins, that run across a line of villages with unpronounceable names, is not unlike watch- ing a baseball game through the medium of a bulletin board. It is an exasperating strain on one's imagination, and the degree of impatience that you suffer from the bald announcement of the muffing of a fly in left-field which you cannot see being muffed, in fact or reason, is magnified in one's helpless speculation over why a certain inward bend in your line of pins should not at once be rounded out with a generous curve into the enemy's country. To the average battle-map warrior the area in back of the front is a vast macadamized plain devoted to an unlimited expanse of reserve forces and supphes. With him, roads do not exist; they count not at all. This draw- ing shows one "fragment of France" where roads did count, and especially the lack of them. It was over a strip of shell-ruptured ground in the St. Mihiel sector that had for four years been No-man's Land. And before we could traverse it we had to build roads around mine craters and across trench hnes while miles of wagons and motors jammed the back roads and waited.  FLIREY IT was interesting at times to contemplate the discrimination exercised by an exploding shell, and this, too, in spite of the indiscrimination of Ger- man artillerymen. The same chance that would, for example, kill two men in a group of three would demolish a row of houses and leave one in their midst untouched. In both cases it was probably a matter of time when all men and all houses would have been smashed to oblivion. The more impressive cases, such as crucifixes that have withstood years of battle-fire, are, after all, only the rare exceptions and evoke our wonder for that reason ; the fallen crucifixes — and how many of them there must have been — set our thoughts along other channels in anger rather than wonder. The village of Flirey suffered a fairly uniform degree of destruction; not a home was spared, and most of the houses have but a broken wall fragment to mark their loca- tion. But in this particular, Flirey is no different from hundreds of other towns. Whereas most of the ruined villages were depressingly ugly in the cruel regularity of their destruction, Flirey possessed one unique structure, a church tower that was built upon a rise of ground. Seen from below, with its one side torn open along its entire length, it cut against the sky in a grim silhouette, skeleton-like, and seemed to stand as a monument to German methods of warfare. The drawing shows the tower seen from the road above the village; from here its frail gracefulness is not apparent. What the German shells failed to do the winter winds have since accomplished and the tower is now only a memory.  THE CROSSROADS AT FLIREY THE road to victory is a rough one, figuratively as well as literally. To have stood by the edge of a road during an offensive and watched a train of wagons or trucks in their convulsion of rocking and swaying progress, sloughing through channels of mud, or dipping into shell-holes with a sudden- ness that threatened their complete overturn, gave one a clearer sense of at least one phase of a staff officer's worries. His job was to see that everything kept moving in support of the attacking forces, and more than once he has been known to envy the commander of infantry who had God's wide acres to spread his men over, even though these broad highways were visited with danger and death. To make the roadways passable was the task of our engi- neer and pioneer regiments. The drawing shows a cross-road where a com- pany of these men can be seen pulling down a wall, the stones of which were used to fill in the larger shell-holes, to widen the roads and make them smoother, and, above all, faster for travel.  NO-MAN'S LAND REGAINED THE background of war was never more vast and impressive than in the St. MihieT sector on the crest of the hill between the villages of Flirey and Essey. Here the war had settled itself in the first few weeks of fighting, and here it had remained until that September morning in 191 8 when, more by the threat of our numbers than the need of our arms, we straightened our front past the St. Mihiel sahent. From the line of our trenches we stepped into a redeemed No-man's Land and found ourselves pushing along roads that had stood untraveled for years, or across a vast prairie of weed-tangled fields that had been planted with wire and plowed by shells. It was the ugfiest piece of France that I have ever seen. But on the hillcrest, overlooking the mist and smoke-filled plains, and with the straight, long ridge of Mont Sec rimming the horizon, and all about you, before your eyes, beneath your feet, the tortured earth, slashed with crumbling trench fines, furrowed by the force of shells, and bristfing with stakes and prickfing wire, while overhead a sky darkened with low-hanging clouds that trailed sheets of sudden rain, or opened for the quick flash of sunshine — here was a setting of solemn magnificence ... a true background of war.  i^^^^*^**'';!**'^"'^'"' ■"' A ROAD IN MONT SEC A PICTORIAL record of a war would not be complete if it lacked the portrait of a road. The roadways of France have always stood in our minds for smoothness and the assurance of a swift and easy passage. So it was before the war, and so it is still until you reach the zones that have suffered from the congestion of war traffic. And here the long strain of heavy travel, the endless run of motor trains, rains, and the untended wear and tear, have done steady damage until the roads have become rutted and pitted and cupped with holes which increased in number and roughness the nearer that one approached the front. Inside the range of enemy artillery fire this inevi- table roughness was punctuated by shell-holes of various sizes, and although our engineers would level these with loose dirt and stone, nevertheless the travel along these shell-hammered lanes was apt to be a tempestuous proces- sion. The road here pictured is a byway in the village of Mont Sec; for years it was a street in No-man's Land, and with its fringe of naked walls, scraggly partitions of crumbling masonry that once were houses and homes, the draw- ing gives one an idea of the task that waits for those who must rebuild the desolated areas of France.  ON THE ROAD TO THIAUCOURT IT is the Pont-a-Mousson-Thiaucourt road, and it is just where it takes a dip downward into a plain of desolation where once stood the village of Regnieville. Nothing but the fragment of a tower and a few jagged walls are left now to prove the town's existence. The view from here and along the road is a typical war landscape . . . hideous and depressing. The road itself, a channel of mud, the trees that once Hned it now smashed and splintered and for the greater part entirely gone, and the ground on either side stretching to the horizon in a turbulence of upheaval, slashed with trenches, cupped with shell-holes, and encumbered with tangled wire and the unsightly refuse of scattered shelters, this is what the war had made of tree-shaded roadways and lovely pastures !  ^^ THIAUCOURT A FTER we had nipped off the St. Mihiel salient in our "bloodless ofFen- /^ sive," and our two forces which had been squeezing the sides of this ^ ^ triangle had joined hands north of Mont Sec, our new front ran from Pont-a-Mousson in a sweep that joined the old French Hnes east of Verdun. In a period of two days we had restored to France about a hundred and fifty square miles of "Germany," including the city of St. Mihiel and many other grateful towns and villages. Of these towns, VigneuIIes and Thiaucourt were the largest. Until a few days before the armistice, when our Second Army had started a new push toward Metz, our front line ran just north of Thiaucourt.  A SALVAGE DEPOT AT THE FRONT THE impulse that draws us to the window of a curio shop, and more than likely brings us into the store to buy trash we do not need, has its parallel in the attraction one has at the front for even the most trivial pile of salvage. The call of the salvage dump is almost irresistible, and is answered, sooner or later, by every human being from the straggling doughboy to the joy-riding Senator. Here are gathered a conglomerated mass of captured or discarded equipment, and it is, no doubt, the dramatic and tragic circum- stance of its presence there that gives to this mass of war junk a glamour that arouses in us the insatiable desire of possession. "Souvenir hunting" is a shorter name for it. Battlefields still fresh with the signs of fighting are seldom free from the scuffling searchers who, criss-crossing through the grass, are held enrapt with the thrill and hope of the discovery of some rare treasure. Eventually the bulk of undesired material reaches a depot designated for its reception, where it is sorted and officially disposed of. The drawing shows one of these depots in the rums of Flirey.  PONT-A-MOUSSON WITH Pont-a-Mousson the gateway into Lorraine, and Lorraine one- half the bone of contention, it is natural that in 1 870, as well as in this war, it should have suffered the fate of the innocent bystander. In terms of punctured roofs and broken glass, the damage done to this place was considerable. But the town will live to see itself patched and plastered into the semblance of unity and respectability and then will take up its old hfe again and pin its faith of an enduring future on the League of Nations.  KEMMEL A TRAVELER through the devastated areas of northern France and Flanders will find his road map of little use to him if he happens to be in search of a village that has stood too squarely in the path of war. If he is alert and keeps both eyes open and has checked the distance that he has traversed, he may be able to distinguish above the general eruption of shell-holes a few beams and a pile of stones to mark the place he is looking for. Even then he will not be entirely certain whether he has found the powdered remains of an entire village or just a single farm house a few miles from the place that he is actually in search of. The result of persistent bombardment is, in the end, pretty much the same; it reduces everything to a neutral- tinted churning of dirt in waves and whirlpools like a brown sea that has suddenly become rigid. Usually the last building of a village to succumb is the church. But this is out of no consideration for its spiritual significance, but because of its physical endurance; it has a tower and higher walls and thicker masonry, and it takes more shells to hammer it flat. That is why when every other sign of a village has vanished the church may still hold up some fragment of its tower above the waves of dirt like the forlorn gesture of a drowning man. Although the village of Kemmel did not sufl^er a complete return to dust, nevertheless the church was about the only recognizable landmark upon which a stranger could with any degree of certainty pin his belief in the existence of the place; that and the fact that Mount Kemmel could be seen rising in the distance. The drawing shows this view of Kemmel and the mountain in back which will always stand as one of the famous conquests of our 27th Division.  A STREET IN BELLICOURT THIS drawing was made after the signing of the armistice, after the sound of the guns had ceased, and after the soldiers had been withdrawn from these crumpled villages and long before the country had been opened again to the civilian population. It was a place of depressing solitude and desolation. Here one felt the cold silence of death; not a sound reached one's ears, and one's eyes could find nothing that even suggested the presence of human life. The thought that not so long ago this street had known the laughter of children at play was now inconceivable. And, after all, this was but one street in only one of the hundreds of villages which have suffered the full horror of war. This drawing was made in the village of Bellicourt, which was captured by our 30th Division, which, together with the 27th, assisted the British in smashing through Von Hindenburg's "impregnable" maze of wire and trenches. The road shown here leads to St. Quentin; the St. Quentin Canal is to the right and runs parallel to this road and within a few yards of the backs of these houses.  ST. QUENTIN CANAL A SKETCH of the St. Quentin Canal at Bellicourt. This canal, with high, steep banks, acted as a huge moat to the Hindenburg defenses. At Belhcourt it goes under ground for a distance of several miles, and served the Germans only too well as a shelter and garrison large enough to accommodate a vast number of troops and supplies. It lay in'the path of our divisions in their attack with the British against the Hindenburg line, and added one more obstacle in a fight that called forth the best that we had in courage, unflinching aggressiveness and leadership. [8i] A STRETCH OF FLANDERS THE background of our fighting, which extended, with a few interrup- tions, from Italy to the north of Russia, offered an exceedingly varied setting of architecture and scenery. Belgium gave us windmills to shoot at. This sketch was made on the edge of the town of Audenard, and marks our line of observation on the night preceding the day we went down the hill and captured the place.  T AUDENARD HIS is the main square of the town of Audenard, which was the prize capture of the men of the 91st Division, when in November, during the last round of the "Big Fight," they assisted in restoring Belgium to the Belgians. It is a unique capture in that it is the largest city that fell before American arms.  VERDUN IN recalling the tenacious resistance of Verdun, we are, perhaps, inchned to imagine the city itself as the impregnable barrier that withstood the German assault and omit from our consideration the ring of forts that were actually the vital instruments of opposition to the German advance. We think of Verdun as one of the "slaughtered" cities of France, and imagine it a tumble of masonry, like Lens and Ypres. As a matter of fact, Verdun is not a dead city. It is desperately wounded, but in time will recover. This drawing, of course, gives no idea of the details of destruction; but it shows that the town has been left standing with more walls and roofs than we had beheved possible.  :?tei A WINDOW IN VERDUN HERE is the picture of a French window which has suffered the fate of a thousancl other French windows that have opened their casements into the face of war. But if it were in the nature of windows to be envious, there must have been many a window along the lesser battlefronts that would have given their glass for the view that this one boasted. It is one of the windows in the bishop's palace at Verdun and looks out across one of the greatest battlefields of all times.  THE ARGONNE COUNTRY TO the layman the art of trench warfare was fairly open to comprehen- sion. He recognized it as a game where there were distinctly two sides, each occupying trenches that the other wanted, and each offering enough obstacles in the nature of barbed wire, hand-grenades, etc., to make their capture difficult. So long as there were trench lines and ribbons of wire to designate them, the rules of the game were evident; but the moment one side had pushed the other beyond these ditches and into the open, the whole aspect of the game was changed. No longer could he see the "sides," nor could his imagination picture the invisible hne of division that separated, by hill and dale, one group of antagonists from the other. The maintenance of "contact" between separate units along the front is a necessity which would seem obvious to him, and yet one that impressed him as being almost impossible of execution, especially where the natural instinct of an advancing force is that of stealth and concealment. You can keep in contact with some- thing that you can see, but if you cannot see it — ^well, the result is only too obvious : Lost companies, lost battalions, lost regiments, and lost battles ! And although many emergency-made officers (even though they might not be will- ing to admit it) have, no doubt, suffered at times the layman's inability to grasp the principles of open warfare, one needs but look across the sweeping acres of battlefields, such as we encountered in the Argonne sector, to realize the difficulties that this method of fighting presented and to sympathize with their task of leadership. This drawing was made above Buzancy and looking north in the direction of Sedan and the end of the war.  VARENNES PROBABLYthe most outstanding feature, topographically, of the Argonne- Meuse sector is its many mountainous sites for the location of its towns and villages. Rising sharply out of a modeling of rolling country, these precipitous hummocks formed formidable points of resistance, a series of natural strongholds that made our advance through this sector one of the most astounding accomplishments of the war. That our progress should have been slow and expensive is only natural; that it was possible at all is, perhaps, open to greater wonder. This sketch of Varennes, a town which we captured on the first day of the offensive, gives one an idea of the nature of these fortress-like villages.  ST. JUVIN AFTER the men of the Seventy-seventh Division, citified New Yorkers whose previous knowledge of forests had not extended much beyond ^ the orderly boundaries of Bronx Park, had made a clean sweep of the Argonne wilderness (the nastiest battleground in France) it added as a full measure of its accomphshment the capture of the village of St. Juvin. It was no easy job. St. Juvin was on the second line of the Kriemhilde defenses, and had the advantage of position on high ground with the precipitous walls of the citadel of Grand Pre as a vantage point for any attempted advance from the forest in that direction. And although the town had resisted three pre- vious efforts on our part to take it, it finally fell to these city-bred men, who, after pushing through the Argonne's natural tangle of thickets and the Ger- man artificial tangle of barbed wire, rejoiced in an "open-air" fight, with a clean-cut goal in sight, and with only a few shells and machine-guns to keep them from it. In less than an hour after they had started the job it was finished and paid for with a neat bag of prisoners as souvenirs.  GRAND PRE OUR Argonne-Meuse battle, besides being one of the chief contributions to the ending of the war, was for us a record fight, the largest in American history. Topographically it marked another record: This strip of France which was turned over to us for capture was, on the whole, the most treacherous and difficult battleground on the entire Western Front. It was a country that not only rolled but took sudden plunges into ravines or threw up sharp rising plateaux and was spotted with woods that were a tangle of jungle-Iike growth. It was an area where one did not figure one's progress in terms of towns. Towns and villages, somehow, seemed incidental to the general lay of the land; woods and hills are what counted, especially the woods. It was nasty going all the way. Pictorially it offered little that was distinctive to mark the progress of our advance, aside from the monotony of rugged country and forests. There were few large towns in the path of our fighting and the smaller ones, in their architectural aspect, were not marked by any distinctive monuments, or if they had been in the past, the devasta- tion of war had reduced them all to a sort of uniform monotony of destruc- tion: Houses with punctured roofs, or without roofs, hke a row of shattered boxes. Of the larger towns Grand Pre was the most distinguished. It is situated at the northern tip of the Argonne Forest and marks the division between it and the Bourgogne Forest to the north. It was a hot place; the Germans were slow to relinquish it, and the town changed hands several times before we were finally able to make it our own. And in this back-and- forth struggle Grand Pre was mauled and battered and stirred up as if by one of our western tornadoes, and for that matter it was, only worse ... it was struck by the fury of the "Jersey Lightnings" in the shape of the 78th Division.  A DUMP AT DUN-SUR'MEUSE THE background of war ofFers very little that satisfies the eye from the standpoint of beauty. Moonlight, if it does not bring with it the dis- traction of an air-raid, can set its spell of mystery on the most sordid subject, whether it shines upon a world at peace or at war. Gun-flashes (if they are numerous enough), the play of searchlights and the drifting stars of signal rockets will move you to a reahzation of loveliness which is born of the old delight in fireworks. Occasionally a sweep of landscape enlivened by troops, or some monumental ruin rising against a bank of clouds will carry your interest above the dull elements that compose it. But, as a whole, the background of war is a confusing mass of drab-colored dreariness. There are too many miles of tree-smashed roads, too many acres of mud and ruptured fields, too many villages of monotonous ruins, too many long wooden bar- racks, ammunition dumps, storage piles, horse sheds — in fact, too much of everything that is sordid, colorless and ugly. And yet, it is all a part of the picture, a vital setting of this tremendous performance of war. And so it must be drawn. This sketch is a typical example of the unloveliness that one con- stantly encounters. It is a sort of general dump for supplies, and a gasoline depot. In the foreground is a horse that has passed the stage of usefulness and has been turned loose to live or die.  A MINE CRATER PERHAPS the most decent tribute to a defeated army, judging the game ofwar purely from the technical side, is to praise its manner of retreat. In this particular the Germans were open to founds of applause. In the Argonne sector, where it was our pleasure to "speed the parting pest," as one wit put it, the enemy extricated himself methodically under the protection of machine-guns placed in positions that formed ugly barriers to our advance. In addition to these defenses, the customary methods of road destruction were followed by the use of mines or by digging wide trenches intended as tank traps. The result is the obvious delay in road traffic so vital to the support of an advancing army. This drawing shows the remnants of a road northwest of Buzancy . Five or six craters of this size so completely destroyed the use of this roadway that it became necessary to skirt this break with a newly made road. The task that our engineers had to face was difficult to accomphsh because of the softness of the ground at this point, which, to give the Boche his due, was, no doubt, why this section of the road had been selected for destruction.  DUN-SUR-MEUSE THE last act of our fighting opened on November ist, when our whole front took a jump forward and broke the German line. After that, it was down grade to victory. Men who had been fighting through a maze of jungles and machine-guns could now step out with a full stride and with heads up. Motor-trucks had to hustle to keep up with the infantry. Only on our right was the procession retarded. There we had to cross the Meuse and the Meuse Canal and take Dun, which, like so many other towns in this fighting zone of ours, sat on a hilltop and defied us. But we were in a hurry; the chance of an armistice at that time was only a faint rumor; it was no business of the fighting man, especially with the Germans on the run and the frontiers of the Vaterland just one step over the horizon. And so when the Fifth Division had orders to "Go through Dun . . . push things along," they did, although it was bitter going and hard pushing. This sketch of Dun was made along the canal and shows the start of the steeply rising hill upon which the main part of the town is built.  A FIELD ENCAMPMENT ONLY those who have felt the tangible darkness at the front, nights when the blackness was a sohd that pressed against your eyes and confused your senses, when you stumbled along roads and only through the grace of a sixth sense that you never before possessed, avoided collision with man and beast and motor-truck, only then could you fully appreciate one of the blessings of the cessation of hostilities: The resto- ration of light. Reheved from the dull threat of suffering or death, one was quick to take the fuller joy in the regained freedom of simple acts — fires at night, lighted roadways, and the immunity from all the petty restric- tions that governed your life for its own preservation. But best of all was one's resurrection from the narrow confinement of trenches and dug-outs into God's open country, to stand erect without menace and danger, to feel against your face the freshness of unpoisoned breezes, and to look once more without dread upon the fullness of the moon. This sketch, which shows a return to "open-air" life after the armistice, is a field encampment in the Argonne-Meuse sector on the outskirts of Dun-sur-Meuse.  ! n, ■^qj A VIEW OF LUXEMBOURG FROM the point of view of the people of Luxembourg our apologetic use of their country as a thoroughfare into Germany, preceded by a polite proclamation explaining the mihtary necessity of our temporary and friendly invasion, was open to two degrees of acceptance: Those who wel- comed us with open arms and those who merely welcomed us. In the city of Luxembourg there was no doubt in the minds of the "advance guard" of our officers and men of the nature of their reception. It was overwhelming in its generosity. And if our soldiers ever tasted the glorious thrill of "conquer- ing heroes" it was on this occasion when the people of Luxembourg laid the city at their feet, opened their houses to them, and wined and dined them into the wee small hours of morn. This drawing, made in the city of Luxem- bourg, gives one some conception of the unusual site upon which the city is built, the precipitous cliffs which form the foundation for the main portion of the town, and the bridges and viaducts that span the ravines and give to the place its unique charm.  ON THE MOSELLE THE act of stepping into Germany was planned by the Allied armies as a concerted action, designed from no consideration to avoid the embarrass- ment of choice in the order of their entrance, but guided by straight military procedure. Accordingly, our various armies placed themselves along the German frontier, brushed their clothes, polished their boots and, in general, rubbed up their military manners which, during the last few months of intensive warfare, had suffered from neglect. During this period in which we awaited the signal to advance, a trip along the banks of the Moselle River, which marked the boundary between Luxembourg and Germany, revealed an energetic return to close-order drill, guard mount, and a revival of the habit and art of saluting. In the meantime, separated only by a river that we might call a stream if we did not call it a creek, were the vine-clad hills of Germany — our great objective.  ECHTERNACH THE honor of having been the first man to cross into Germany is one that was probably disputed by several thousand men. One could not walk along the banks of the Moselle that marked the boundary between Luxembourg and Germany without a desire to reach the opposite side and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you were at last in the enemy's country and also that you were there in advance of several hundred thousand other men who were possessed of the same desire. At the bridges, this impulse to cross in advance of the authorized army order would take the form of a mad longing to rush the guards or by sweet words and the display of important- looking papers beguile the sentries into a confusion of their authority and in this way effect a crossing. To what extent this was attempted, only the guardhouse records would show. Of the several towns that marked our bridgeways into Germany, Echternach was the largest. It is situated on the Sure River, several miles above its junction with the Moselle.  A A CORNER IN BREMM GERMAN village on the Moselle which, although "crumbling with age," formed a bitter contrast to those villages which the Germans had crumbled with shells and fire and the vile tricks of destruction that marked the progress of their invasion.  1^ \ \ ,nM<,r.«.-^aH A VIEW OF MONTABAUR THE smaller towns in the zone of occupation that fell to our lot were not especially attractive. Seen at a distance, they were quite suggestive of our own suburban towns. But they were generally clean, or appeared to be clean in contrast with the towns and villages at the front which formed our standard of comparison. To the doughboy, with whom a httle beauty, more or less, did not matter, they were in most cases wholly acceptable in his eyes because they offered him billets that were high and dry and water-proof, and also all the thoughtful attentions of people who were anxious to have their solicitude reach the ear of the Peace Conference. This drawing shows a view of Montabaur which, in its setting and the quaintness of many of its houses, came very near satisfying One's preconceived idea of what a Rhine town should look like.  •■TM' COBLENZ THOSE who expected that the entrance of our troops into Coblenz would be a military pageant, a sort of "here-the-conquering-heroes-come,"with bands playing, flags flying, and all the stage trappings of a victorious entry, were, no doubt, sorely disappointed. That the Germans expected us to enter in this way is likely, knowmg their habits and inclinations where mili- tary functions are concerned. And this belief was substantiated by the marked emptiness of the streets as the hour scheduled for our entrance drew near. But mstead of a procession of triumph, our men made their entrance into town quietly, but with a suddenness and completeness that filled the streets in every direction that one looked. For the few German citizens who were caught out in the streets and were unable to hide their heads the suddenness and afl-pervading presence of our troops must have been an impressive sight, and to those who kept behind shuttered windows the sound of our marching columns must have cut deep into their pride and have awakened memories too bitter for comparison. The drawing shows the river front at Coblenz with the huge hotel which served as Third Army Head- quarters on the right, while in the street and beyond the rail, on the pontoon bridge, are seen our wagon-trains crossing the Rhine.  CROSSING THE RHINE SECOND to Berlin, the Rhine became in the minds of both citizen and soldier the most popular objective of our Allied armies in their drive for victory. With the Germans pushed back across the Rhine and our triumphant armies turning the tables of destruction on to the Vaterland, the end of the war would be merely a matter of days . . . and joyous days at that. For that reason the armistice, which halted hostilities on French soil instead of German, disappointed the longings of multitudes who had set their hearts upon a more tangible proof of victory. But no more satisfactory demonstration of the triumph of our arms could have been desired than the sight of our long khaki columns marching along the winding roads of Ger- many that followed the Moselle to Coblenz and across the Rhine. Here was the proof of our victory, and it is a pity that the whole of America could not have witnessed the momentous occasion that marked our crossing of that famous river. At Coblenz, where it was my good fortune to view it, it was an event that was typically American in that it occurred without pomp or ostentation. Orders were given to cross at 7 A.M., and so, promptly at that hour, we crossed. On that morning of December 1 3th it was still rather dark and misty, and looking down from the windows of the hotel that served as army headquarters, one could but faintly distinguish the waiting columns at the head of the pontoon bridge. There was no flare of bugles, no beating of drums or martial music to mark the occasion of their advance. Only the brief order to "march" set in motion the stream of American soldiers that for days continued to flow across the river and spread out into the arc that formed our area of occupation. One needed but to witness the sight of the "Stars and Stripes" moving forward above the dull ranks of khaki and shin- ing like a bright flower agamst the gray, vine-clad hills of the Rhine to know that this was the fuIfiHment of our dreams, the final curtain which ended our military participation in the greatest and grimmest of wars.  PRESS OF NORMAN T. A. MUNDER &. CO. BALTIMORE, MD.

domain: history