ILLUSTRATIONS
[She Kissed Me Smack on the Cheek and Said Her Name Was Louise]
[“‘Take That Hat Off. It Isn’t Regulation,’ Says the Second Looey to Me”]
[“Make Friends with the Cooties. Then You’re All Set”]
[“I Want to Get a Picture of O. D.’s Grave”]
[“A Bearded Poilu Came Tearing Out of a Ruined House, Waving a Bottle Over His Head”]
A great many impressionable young men who become soldiers overnight and go to war feel strongly inspired to write books about their adventures. I felt the same way before the newness of the life on the western front had been rubbed away by constant friction with some of the more monotonous things of war, such as hunger, cold, mud, cooties, and other romance-destroying agents. I buried the idea of writing a book just before my division was called upon to stand between the Boches and Paris during the trying days of July and August of 1918. It is very good for me that I detached myself from the desire to write a war book about that time. Experience proved that it was necessary to give all my available time to the business of fighting the guerre.
The book-bug never came my way again, for I do not look upon What Outfit, Buddy? as the result of answering some insistent, invisible summons to write a war book. I did not intend writing a war book when I started the first line of What Outfit, Buddy? I merely hoped to let Jimmy McGee, a real, regular fighting Yank who has seen his share of la guerre, tell the story of the things that he encountered as a member of the American Expeditionary Force. I sincerely trust that my original intentions have carried.