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Show UheU&r aldose Ranee Described In a RemarkaW ! Jcrici Dy an Officer of f lie Thomnson.Jr. At fllulrtd by the Author from ktlcfwMacUenitheBalHefKrl jrw with gun-flashes, but the road alonn j which the battullon went enjoyed for the time an uneasy Immunity. The rests were all too short ; the sweat- j Ing files swore at their heavy packs; the going was very hard. Presently the road ceased to he a road merely a broken way across an Interminable waste of shell-boles, made passable after a fu.-.blon by the busty work of French engineers, tolling behind the assault of the Infantry. The flies plodded on each aide of the tumbled track, and as they neared Somnie-l'y a pitiful stream of traflte grew and passed between them, the tide of French wounded ebbing to the rear. They were the debris of the attacks at-tacks (hat had spent themselves through the day walking wounded, drlftlug buck like shadows In stained blue uulforms men who staggered and leuned against each other and spoke In low, racked voices to the passing flies: and broken men who were borne in stretchers, moaning "Ah, Jesu !,..." "Doucement. doucement 1 1 . , Further back the ambulunces would be waiting for them. ' The column went quickly through the town of Sonime-l'y, Into which shells were fulling, stumbling over lie debris of ruined walls and houses There was a very busy French dressing dress-ing station there, under the relic of a churcli. It was too dark to see, but each man caught the sound and the smell of it. They cleared tha town and went on to a crossroads. French guides were to have met the battalion there, for the line was Just ahead, but the guides were late. There was a nerve-racking halt. The next battalion In column closed up; a machine-gun outfit, with Its solemn, blase mules. Jammed Into the rifle companies. The Forty-ninth was the leading company, Just behind the I?attttlIon Headquarters group, and the second-in-command went up to where the major and his satellites were halted. "Crossroads are always a dam' bad business, Coxy," the major was observing ob-serving to his adjutant. "Just askln' for it here no tellin how late our Frog friends will be get the men moved Into thnt ditch off the road yonder Ah 1 thought so!" A high, swift whine that grew to a shrieking roar, and a five-Inch shell crashed down some fifty yards to the right of the crowded road. Everybody except the mules were flat on the ground before It landed, but wicked splinters of Bteel sung across the rond, and a machine-gunner, squnttlng hy his cart, collapsed and rolled toward the edge of the road, swearing and clutching at his thigh. CHAPTER VII division with a Verdun history, shattered shat-tered themselves In fruitless attacks on the Essen trench and the Kssen hook, a switch line of that system. Beyond the F.ssen line the Blanc Mont position loomed Impregnable. Late on the 1st of October, a gray, bleak day, the battullon got Its buttle orders, and took over a mangled front line from certain weary Frenchmen. Gathering the platoon leaders and non-coms around them, the captain and the secoud-ln-commnnd of the Forty-iilnth company spread a large map Ion the ground, weighting its corners with their pistols. "i'ou give the dope, John," ordered the captain, who was not a man of words, and his Junior spoke somewhat In this manner. "Here, you birds, look at this map. The Frogs have driven the Boche a kilometer and a hulf north of Somme-I'y. Somme-I'y. Tou see It here the town you watched them shell this morning. ! They thave gotten Into the Prussian trendy this blue line with the wire in fropt of it. It's Just a fire trench, mostly sbell-holes linked up. Behind It, quite close, Is the Essen trench, which Is evidently a humdinger I Concrete Con-crete pill boxes and deep dugouts and all that sort of thing regular fort. "The Frogs say It can't be taken from the front they've tried. We're gnln' to tuke It On the other side of that is the Kibe trench and a little to the left the Kssen hook, and In the center the Bols de Vlpre same kind o' stuff, they say. We're to take them. Yo. see them all oil the map. . . . Next, a way up In this corner of the map, is the Blunc Mont place. Whoever Who-ever is left when we get that fur will tuke that, too. . . . Questions? . . . Yes, Tom, we ought to get to use those STORY FROM THE START Th author describes how tht A First battalion of the Fifth ma-l ma-l rlnes ar quartered near Marlany during tha flrat part of June, 1(11, whan they ara suddenly sent up north to relieve the Flrat division, bearing the brunt of tha German onVnatve. l'art ot tha Fifth wreat Hill 142 from tha enemy and wait thera for tha German counter offensive they can sea forming-. A terrlllo German Ger-man attack soon develupa, wreaking- fearful havoc among the marines, ma-rines, but not dlalodalriB them. On tha sixth of June tha Fifth runs Into bitter fighting in the , vicinity of Champlllun and drives out tha Boche, but at great cost Than came tha Dole da Ilelleau and again tha marines acquitted themselves marvelously. lie-placements lie-placements arrive to cover the heavy lossea. Tha marlnea ara relieved, but tha respite Is ahort-llved, ahort-llved, aa they ara aoon ordered to tha Bnlaaona aector, whera great German offensive Is under way. On July II, after a heavy barrage, the Americans, Senegalese Senegal-ese and French foreign legion go forward. All enemy positions are , taken, though at fearful cost, and tha Flrat battalion of the Fifth marlnea ara withdrawn for rest and replacement!. CHAPTER VI Continued "So this, Slover, Is the Chnmptigne,'' snld the second-in-command to one of his non-coms who stood beside him. The sergeant spat. "It looks like hell, sir!" he said. The lieutenant strolled over to where a French stuff ofllcer stood with a knot of officers In the ede of the pines, pointing out features of this extended field, made memorable by hitter flirhting. "Since 1914 we have fought hard here," he was saying. "Oh, the French know this Champagne well, and the Boche knows It too. Yonder" he pointed to the southwest "Is the Butte de Souuln, where our Foreign legion met In the first year thnt Guard division that the I'russlans call the 'Cockchafers'. They took the j liutte, but most of the Legion are i lying there now. And yonder" the Frenchman extended his arm with a gesture that had something of the Kalute In It "stands the mountain of Ithelms. If you look the air Is clear-lug clear-lug a little you can perhaps see the towers of Ithelms Itself." A long grayish hill lay against the gray sky at the horizon, and over It a good glass showed, very far and faint, the spires of the great cathedral, ca-thedral, with a cloud of shell-fire hanging ovtr them. "All this terrain, as far as Ithelms, Is dominated by Blanc Mont ridge yonder to the north. As long as the Boiiie holds Blanc Mont, he can throw his shells Into Ithelms; he can i dominate the whole Champagne sector, sec-tor, as fur as the Marne. Indeed, they say that the kaiser wutched from Blanc Mont the battle that he launched here In July. And the Boche means to hang on there. So far, we have failed to dislodge them. I expect" ex-pect" he broke off and smiled gravely on the circle of officers "you will see some very hard fighting In the next few days, gentlemen I" The second-in-command and the captain, that afternoon, were huddled under a small sheet of corrugated Iron, stolen by nn enterprising orderly from the French gunners. The captain was very large, and the other very lean, and they were both about the same length. They fitted under the sheet by a sort of dovetailing process that made It complicated for either to move. A second In-command Is sort of an understudy to the company commander. command-er. In some of the outfits the captain does everything, and his understudy con only mope around and wait for his senior to become a casualty. In others. It Is the Junior who gets things done, and the captain Is Just n figurehead. In the Forty-ninth, however, the relation was at Its hnp-biest. hnp-biest. The big captain and his lleti-Itttant lleti-Itttant functioned together as smooth-IJts smooth-IJts parts of a sweet-running engine, nnd there wus between them the un demonstrative affection of men who have faced much peril together. .. . ... ....!. ...1 , 1. ..... I n Furious Fighting by the Essen Hook. The men moved swiftly and without disorder, to the ditch, which was a deep communication trench paralleling the road. Another shell came as they moved, fulling to the left, and then another, closer, this time between the road and the trench. A mule or two reared and plunged, stricken ; a marine ma-rine whose head had been unduly high slumped silently down the side of th trencti with most of his head gone. More shells came, landing along the road, between the road and the trench, and one or two of them In the trench Itself. Cries and groans came from the head of the column; stretcher bearers hurried In that direction : the battalion lay close and waited, Then the shelling stopped. I'p forward the major drew a long breath. "Just har-assln' har-assln' fire on these crossroads. I was afraid we were spotted. Now, those guides " A little group of Frenchmen French-men arrived panting at the head of the column and the men were quickly on the move again. "If Brother Bocht had kept fllngln' them senbags around here, he'd a-htirt somebody. Where do we go from here?" Said the major, coming to the head of the Forty-ninth with a French guide "Francis, we're tukln' the regimental regi-mental front division's putting four battalions In the line. The Sixth will be on our left; Infantry brigade on the right It me know how your I sector looks my P. O. will be I'd hotter send a runner with you. Here's your guide." The company moved off, and the other companies, going Into position In the battered Prussian trench, facing fac-ing the formidable FXsen work. The French riflemen they found there were hanging on In the very teeth of the enemy. Their position had been hastily hasti-ly constructed a few days before hy the liird -pressed Boche and was a mere j selection from the abundant shell Waters, connected by shallow digging. The marines stumbled and slipped through Its winding. It was cluttered up with dead men, for It had liecn strongly held and dearly won. The Forty-ninth took over the part allotted to It from some ten platoons pla-toons of Frenchmen, eight or ten men to a platoon. In command of a first lieutenant. It was what was left of a full .battalion. (TO BE CONTINUED.) "Those Sawed-Off Shotguns They Gave Us at St. Mlhlsl." sawed-off shotguns they gave ns ut St. Mlhlel though when we get past the Kssen system, we'll be In the open, mostly. . . . The old Deux-leme Deux-leme division Is goln In tonight It's goln' to be some party I Move nut of here as soon as It's dark. That's all." The road here was screened on the side toward the enemy by coarse mats of camouflage material erected on tall poles. Through this screen the German Ger-man flares, ceaselessly ascending, shone, with cold, greenish whiteness, so that men saw their comrades' faces weirdly drawn and pale under their helmets. The files talked as they went "I've seen the time I'd have called those things prettybut now reckon hell's i lit with the same kind of glims IV . . . "Remember the flare that went up In our faces the night we made the relief In Bellew woods? Seemed to me like everybody In the world was lookin' at me." "Hois de Belleaut mighty few In the battalion now , that remember them days, sonny.1 . . ." The road passed Into desolation and wound north, kilometer after kilometer.; kilo-meter.; Presently the camouflage ended and the battalion felt exceedingly exceed-ingly naked without its shelter. Then a slope to the left screened the way, the crest of It sharply outlined as the flares ascended. Beyond that crest the machine-guns sounded very near; now and again the air was tilled with the whispering rush of their bullets, pass-lug pass-lug high toward some chance target In the rear. The upper air was populous with shells passing, and the sky flickered AS lor me, miminni mo I drawing up one soaked knee nnd put-I put-I Hi.g the oilier out In the wet, "I want to got wounded In this fight. Abpn hllghty. In the arm or the leg. I think. Something that will keep me In a nice dry hospital until spring. I ' don't like cold weather. Now who Is ! imshln? It's nothln' to me, John. If ! j our side leaks keep off o' mine I" So the last day of September, 1918, passed, with the racket up forward unabated. So much of war Is Just Ivlng around waiting in more or less discomfort And herein lies the er-cvlience er-cvlience of veterans. They swear and growl horribly under discomfort and exposure far more thnn green 'roops ; but privations do not sap their plrlt or undermine that Intangible thing called morale. Rather do sufferings suf-ferings nourish In the men a cold, mounting anger, that swells to sullen ' srdor when at last the Infantry comes to grips with the enemy, and then It goes hnrd Indeed with him who stands In the way. j On the front, a few kilometers from where the battalion lay and listened ' 'o the guns, tionrard's attack was coming to a head around the heights lortii of Somine-ry ami tile strong trenm systems that irunrded the way -i I V ,' Mont rldf-'e. Three mngnlfl- ..ncb divisions, one of chas-. r """"" |