If I have allowed Jimmy McGee to tell you his story, then I have fulfilled my hopes, for I believe that Jimmy McGee’s story of the war is merely the universal version of the great adventure as held by legions of his comrades.
In my effort to let Jimmy tell his story I have not tried to use book language. I have used to the best of my ability the speech of men who became a real integral part of the guerre.... To do that it was necessary to let Jimmy and his comrades speak French in the manner of American soldiers. I tried to register the true value of their struggles with the difficult French language by resorting to phonetic spelling in the case of practically all French words which have become a part of the American Expeditionary Forces’ vocabulary. Students of the beautiful, musical language of France will, I trust, grant me this indulgence, as I have taken the liberties only in the desire to tell America how its fighting men overcame the difficulties presented by living side by side with a people who spoke a foreign language.
T. Howard Kelly.
CHAPTER I—“WHAT OUTFIT, BUDDY?”
Jimmy McGee, hanging on to a long, lean loaf of brown bread with his left hand and swinging a heavy, dangerous-looking cane in his right grip, moved leisurely over a white road of France toward the four-year-old battlelines that stretched between Verdun and Saint-Mihiel.
McGee, himself, was camouflaged beneath an assortment of things and stuff that would have made Panhandle Pete of funny-paper fame look like a smartly dressed gentleman in comparison. His make-up was not calculated to allow observers much chance to criticize his own physical attributes or failings.
A bit of reddish-brown hair managed to crop up in sundry places outside the distorted corners of the clownish thing that had been issued him in the name of an overseas cap. The part of his shirt collar that almost swallowed his ears and chin came very near hiding his freckled snub nose. But it didn’t. The nose insisted on protruding enough to be seen. Jimmy’s eyes, alone, were open and ready for inspection. Any one might have guessed the nationality of his ancestors by the laughing blue of his eyes. What could be seen of his features hinted that he owned a strong, good-looking face. Perhaps his long length of wide limb would have given him some individuality among a gang of six-footers, for he was exceptionally tall. Unfortunately his height was lost in the bulk of war-like paraphernalia that jangled from countless straps, ropes, and belts. Otherwise his identity was completely blanketed.
Nobody, except one of his own kind, would have ever recognized him as an American soldier. He was a sad departure from all that Army regulations and magazine covers had insisted upon as a typical member of the “best dressed and best fed army” in the world. Most likely Jimmy’s own mother would have passed him up as a straying peddler. Perhaps Sergeant George Neil, McGee’s pal and bunkie, might have recognized him by the stout, strong-muscled legs which were swathed in muddy war-putees,—that ended in a final strip of thin raglings below his knees,—and moved in an easy-going stride peculiar to his own ideas of speed.
However strange and disillusioning, Private, 1st Class, Jimmy McGee may have appeared to the men who designed the uniform and equipment of American soldiers, there was nothing about the boy to distinguish him apart from thousands of comrades in soiled and torn olive-drab, who had come out of the Chateau-Thierry rackett with their appreciation for neatly made packs and dress-parade tactics all shot to hell.
Appearances had long since ceased to count in his young life. He had forgotten all of the old O. D. stuff, after discovering that “squads right” and saluting could never win a guerre. Consequently Jimmy ambled along, loaded down to the hubs under a confusion of equipment and souvenirs that he had collected from three fronts during the past eight months, without a thought of anything, except the height of the hill that he was climbing and the emptiness of his stomach. The fact that he didn’t know just exactly where he was, or where his outfit might be, wasn’t causing him any worries. He had been separated from the battery too many times already and this latest separation was only twenty-four hours old,—a mere trifle to Jimmy McGee.