GERMAN AERIAL BOMB
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At four o'clock one day, after the regular round of hut deliveries, a special order was handed me from our chief for immediate execution. In ten minutes I was off in my ever-faithful flivver. My order took me to Reherrey, a village near the line, where a special pass was secured from the commanding officer, allowing me to go over a dangerous road exposed to the German guns. From the Y.M.C.A. Hut at Reherrey, I took with me a new secretary, a Congregational minister from the Middle West, to relieve McGuffy, the secretary at St. Pole, whom I was to bring back to headquarters.
When we reached the hut at St. Pole, the secretaries, including McGuffy, were out at the front with supplies for the boys. While waiting for them to return we strolled about through the desolate remnants of this old peasant village. My companion had not been under fire before, so when the first shell from the Boche "heavies" came whistling and whining toward us he hastened to the dugout saying, "This is no place for me." He was ashamed of his own fear and proved that he was a "regular guy" by joining in the laugh and jibes of the fellows. Being reassured by the passing of several shells safely overhead, he rejoined me in our tramp through the village. Every portable thing of value had been carried off by the Huns and what was left had been destroyed. Stoves had been broken down and beds and furniture demolished.
When McGuffy got back we started for Baccarat. It was a stormy night, black as ink, and we had to go over roads which the bombardment of the early evening had torn up. It took two hours to go eight miles. When we arrived we found an anxious group of "Y" workers discussing the probability of our having been blown to pieces or captured by the Boche, and they were just about to send out a searching party.
No soldiers ever had anything on the boys from the Buckeye State. They had been sent to the Alsatian border to hold the line against a threatening foe. Persistent rumors told of a German drive on this sector. Nothing but our men and guns and a few hastily constructed wire entanglements stood in their way. And the German army had a name for sweeping right through such open country and taking what it wanted. But many things caused Fritz to stop and think. The German raiding parties were failures. Only two out of a score succeeded in getting the Americans. That meant that the Yankee out-posts were not only on the job but also that they were absolutely fearless and able to capture single-handed superior numbers of the enemy.
Then, one night just as the Germans seemed to be concentrating on a dangerous salient, eighty of our big guns in a couple of hours coughed up twelve hundred tons of gas and spit it in the faces of an enemy that dared to think it could fool with Uncle Sam's boys from Ohio. For two days after, the Boche were carrying their dead out of that area.
No more threats of a German drive were heard in that sector, but reports came frequently of Boche prisoners and deserters who offered to surrender whole companies of Huns if they could only be guaranteed that the Americans would spare their lives.