CHAPTER XV—PINCHING OFF THE ST. MIHIEL SALIENT
By noon of the next day Battery C’s guns had all been securely emplaced. O. D. wrote three letters in the morning, all of which centered around Jimmy McGee and the front. In his letter to Mary he said, in part:
You’ll love Jimmy, he’s so big and kind. If he ever got all cleaned and dressed he’d sure be handsome, but the boys don’t have time for that kind of life up here.
Mary, Jimmy never gets any letters, except from a few boys that work where he used to. His folks are all dead. I told him that you would write to him. He is sending you a German officer’s helmet that he took from a German at Château-Thierry. You see, Jimmy has been at the front for a long time.
I am at the front with him now. But, somehow, I don’t feel like I thought I would. It doesn’t seem so terribly different from a place that we stopped at about twenty miles from here. Of course the guns make a lot of noise when they go off and there’s all kinds of mysterious lights at night that make you think of ghosts at work. But the airplanes and bombs are what scare me most....
Before supper was served on the afternoon of September 11th the guns of Jimmy McGee’s regiment had registered on their targets and everything was in readiness to participate in the greatest effort that the First American Army was destined to make on the fields of France.
That night there were no certain indications that the drive would start immediately. The ordinary precautions were taken. But they alone did not suggest to the men that something big was about to happen. Yet, in the blood of them all, a fever was present which brought its presentiments.
“O. D., I got a hunch. Nothin’ certain in this guerre, you know. But I’ve got a feelin’ in my fingers that we’re goin’ to use old Betsy to-night,” spoke Jimmy.
“Jimmy—Jimmy.” Neil was calling him.
“Oui. What’s up?”