"Without much artillery on either side and without gas, the Americans fought the Germans through that woods, four kilometers (nearly three miles) long, for six hours. At last we got through and took up a position across the northern end of the woods.
"Perhaps the most sensational part of the fight was when about Germans got around behind our men. They were chased into a clearing, where the Americans went at them from all sides with the bayonet, and I am told that three prisoners were all that were left of the Germans."
"How did you do it?" inquired a dazed Prussian officer, taken prisoner at Chateau Thierry by an American soldier. "We are storm troops."
"Storm hell!" said the American. "I come from Kansas, where we have cyclones."
That was and is the idea. This spirit enabled American soldiers to go wherever they wanted to go. A European officer on observation duty with the United States force at Chateau Thierry wanted to know how our soldiers got through as they did.
"They seem to have been trained somewhere," he said, "for they fight all right. But that doesn't explain to me the way they keep going."
The American officer with whom he was talking gave this explanation:
"They were thoroughly trained in our camps at home in all but one thing. They were not trained to stop going."
It was a splendid exhibition, the first of many of its kind.
A PERSONAL ACCOUNT