Said the Sergeant: "Every shell
Seemed to whine, 'Old scout, you're dead!'
And I thought I'd gone to hell
In a blizzard of hot lead.
But each bloomin' gunner stuck
At his post by his machine."
"Our orders said to hold it, Buck!"
Said Private Peter Green.
Said the Chaplain: "Talk of pep!
They were there! And, may I add,
When we clambered up the step
That last fight, we only had
Eighty men of Company D—
Every one, I'll say, a man!"
"And am I glad I'm home? Ah, oui!"
Said Private Mike McCann.
Charlton Andrews.
Early in September eight American divisions were concentrated on the Lorraine front and organized into the First American Army. On September 12 an assault in force was made against the St. Mihiel salient, which had threatened France for four years. Twenty-four hours later the salient was ours, together with 15,000 prisoners.
SEICHEPREY
[September 12, 1918]
A handful came to Seicheprey
When winter woods were bare,
When ice was in the trenches
And snow was in the air.
The foe looked down on Seicheprey
And laughed to see them there.
The months crept by at Seicheprey
The growing handful stayed,
With growling guns at midnight,
At dawn, the lightning raid,
And learned, in Seicheprey trenches,
How war's red game is played.
September came to Seicheprey;
A slow-wrought host arose
And rolled across the trenches
And whelmed its sneering foes,
And left to shattered Seicheprey
Unending, sweet repose.
Two weeks later we began our greatest battle in an attack on the strong German positions running from the Meuse westward through the Argonne forest. It was in this battle that perhaps the most remarkable single exploit of the war was performed, when Corporal Alvin C. York, a young giant from the mountains of Tennessee, who had been sent forward with a small squad to clean up some machine-gun nests, killed single-handed twenty-eight Germans, and came back with 132 prisoners.