It was that same spirit which caused Corporal Cole, of the Marines, to say: "The marines do not know such a word as 'retreat.'" That was the spirit which brought the curt reply from Col. Whittlesey when the Huns asked his "Lost Battalion" to surrender.
The American army was a victorious army. It had never been defeated. It had faith in its ideals. Those ideals were neither selfish nor arrogant. It wore no boastful "Gott mit uns" on its belt. It desired only the opportunity of striking low that nation which dared to dictate terms to the Almighty as well as to men. It braved three thousand miles of submarine peril to meet such an enemy.
Even an invincible army has to breathe and eat and sleep. They can hold their breath long enough to adjust a gas mask, but the mask tells us that even in gas they must be enabled to breathe. In the heat of the chase when the Hun is the hare, they can forget for a time that they are hungry, but the field kitchen testifies to the fact that hunger undermines courage and that an efficient army must be a well-fed army.
To see men curled up in muddy shell-holes with the sky for canopy, peacefully sleeping, while cannon are booming on every side and shells whining overhead, is sufficient evidence that sleep is not a myth invented by the Gods of Rest.
While the spirit of the boys was willing to go right through to Berlin, their flesh asserted its weakness. Their first dash over the top was invincible, and we were told that in ten hours they swept forward to their goal sixty hours ahead of schedule. There they dug in and for four days held the line in the face of a murderous and desperate German fire.
During those four awful days I saw no sign of "yellow," but everywhere relentless courage.
"Hello, Mr. Y-Man, don't you want to see a fellow that has three holes through him and still going strong?"
"You don't really mean it, do you? Show him to me. I want to look into the eyes of such a man." They led me over to a bunch of soldiers who had just come out of the line and there in the center of an admiring crowd was my man, happy as a lark. His three wounds—one in the left breast, one in the thigh, and a scalp wound—had been dressed, and while these wounds had glorified him in the eyes of his comrades, he was ready to forget them.
Even though a hundred shells exploding near by miss you, and you become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers. If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back areas where you can forget the war and get a grip upon yourself again.
Holding the line in open warfare costs a heavy toll in human life, but here again our boys showed their invincible spirit. Not once did I see a Yankee that showed any eagerness to get away from the line. The mortally wounded accepted the sacrifice they had been called upon to make without bemoaning fate, and remained cheerful to the end. Of course when a man was "facing West" he longed for the loved faces and the heaven of home. We who had our own "little heaven" back in the homeland knew and instinctively read those sacred thoughts and prayers and gave just the hand-pressure of deep sympathy.