BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
All rights reserved
THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The writer of these letters and maker of these drawings went overseas with the first Technology unit; landed in France on the Fourth of July, 1917; began his service as a member of the Reserve Mallet, and was mustered into the American Army on October 1, 1917. In preparing the letters and cartoons for the press, it was thought best to begin where rumors of impending German surrender first appear in the correspondence, thus confining the humorously illustrated story to the last weeks of the war. Mr. Day wrote his letters with no intention or expectation of having them published; that is entirely the work of his friends, who believe that his impromptu sketches will be found to furnish ample justification for the existence of this book.
Mr. Day served in the Reserve Mallet, a camion unit to whose spirit and efficiency Stars and Stripes has paid the following unaffected and authentic tribute:
“In a summer when again and again the historic phrase ‘Franco-American troops’ makes its appearance in the communiqués, the distinction of being the complete amalgam of the two armies belongs to the flying squadron of emergency transportation, that trundling troop of trucks, that charging company of camions, the Mallet Reserve.
“This organization consists of 700 five-ton trucks—American trucks driven over French roads, driven now by French now by American drivers, officered by French and American officers, carrying French and American troops, French and American ammunition.
“The Mallet Reserve is so named because its commanding officer is Major Mallet of the French Cavalry, and is called a Reserve because it is attached to no Army Corps, but rather is held in reserve for emergency duty whenever a crisis in the war brings a crisis in transportation.