"I didn't know then, and don't know yet, what has become of all the rest of our officers and men, but I sorter felt like every shot I sent over was paying 'em back for some of their dirty work. We kept handing it to 'em hot. You oughter seen that Chink talking Mongolian to a machine gun, and, believe me, he sure made it understand him. I'm here to say that when a Chink fights, he's a fighting son-of-a-gun and don't let anybody kid you different.
"Well, our little mob held 'em off till dark and then British Tommies piled in and relieved us. We needed it because we hadn't had a bite in seventy hours and I had been lying in the mud and water for twice that time. Just before relief comes on, two skulking figures comes over the top. I was thinking that maybe these was Hindus or Eskimos coming to join our little international party and we shouts out to 'em and asks 'em where they hails from. Both of 'em yelled back, 'Kamerad,' and then I knew that we'd not only held the fort, but had captured two prisoners even if they was deserters.
"I marched 'em back that night to the next town and took 'em into a grocery store, where there was a lot of Tommies helping themselves to the first meal in days. While we were eating bread and cheese and sardines and also feeding me two prisoners, we talks to them and finds out that, as far as they are concerned, the Kaiser will never get their vote again.
"One Tommy says to one of my prisoners: 'Kaiser no good—pas bon, ain't it?' and the prisoner said, 'Yah,' and I shoved my elbow into his ribs and right quick he said, 'Nein.' Then the Tommy said: 'Hindenburg dirty rotter, nacy pa?' and the Fritz said, 'Yah. Nein,' and then looked at me and said 'Yah' again. They was not bad prisoners and I marched 'em twenty miles that night, just the three of us—two of them in front and me in back with the rifle over me arm.
"And the joke of it was that both of them could have taken the gun and killed me any minute for all I could have done."
"How do you figure that, Corporal?" I asked.
For reply, Jimmy Brady drew from beneath the blankets a pair of knotted hands with fingers and thumbs stiffened and bent in and obviously impossible to use on a trigger. Brady is not in the hospital for wounds. Four days and nights in water and mud in the battle of battles had twisted and shrunken him with rheumatism. But he is one rheumatic who helped to save Amiens.
Upon the heels of the German successes in Picardy, developments followed fast. Principal among these, was the materialisation of a unified command of all the armies of the Allies. General Ferdinand Foch was selected and placed in supreme command of every fighting man under the Allied flags.
One of the events that led up to this long delayed action, was the unprecedented action of General Pershing, when he turned over the command of all the American forces in France to General Foch. He did this with the words: