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And then, somehow, word came back to the officers in charge of the big American guns that their shells were having an effect on the Hun artillery. Piece after piece of the Boche batteries were silenced, and at last the Sammies began to obtain mastery of the artillery situation. And then it was that a barrage could be laid down, and an advance attack made.
And even in that terrible din of battle they spared a thought for the gallant comrade who would have been with him if he could. With wild yells the Sammies swept over the first line of German trenches. The Boches had deserted them in the face of a withering rifle and machine-gun fire. "Come on! Come on!" yelled the lieutenant again and again. "They're laying down a perfect barrage for us!
For a time it was a battle of rifles the artillery and machine-guns seemed to have been silenced temporarily. On rushed the Sammies, in their own peculiar but comparatively safe, open formation. Rushing, dropping, firing, up again, now down, but ever going onward, led by their officers. The Huns received the fire, and that it was deadly was evidenced by the gaps torn in the gray ranks.
It was hard telling how long it would be before the British and French general staffs would consider the American troops sufficiently seasoned to take over a complete sector of the battle line, and for that reason, the "Sammies," as they were affectionately called at home, were unlikely to see any real fighting for some time.
Having read his newspaper through, editorials, cartoons, and war-poems, his eye fell on a half-column headed Shakespeareville, Kansas. It seemed that the Shakespeareville Chamber of Commerce had recently held an enthusiastic debate as to whether the American soldiers should be known as "Sammies" or "Battling Christians." The thought gagged him.
Now it came with a vengeance. But the Germans were not idle. If their infantry was held back from making a counter-attack, their heavy guns, and here and there, machine-guns, were not idle. And these weapons tore big holes in the ranks of the Sammies.
It so happened that these troops were Sammies and Blaine, with a swoosh, swept down to within a dozen yards right over the heads of these men and the column heard his megaphone bellowing: "Watch out, bunkies! 'Ware that wrecked plane! She's full of Boche bombs. Watch out spread out! Give it room! Oh, you doughboys! Rah for Uncle Sam!"
The stone barn held a machine gun nest, and many of the Sammies were killed or wounded before the crew of Huns were scattered or captured and there were very few of this last class, so desperate was their resistance. From somewhere came the signal to cease firing, and, a little later, a captain came along and took charge.
One can not shout in a gas mask. But there was shouting in the hearts of the Sammies as they rushed forward to do their share in destroying the beast from the earth. Upward and onward they rushed and then they were in the midst of the battle. And yet not exactly in the midst, for the actual conflict was rather of longer distance than that. Hand-to-hand fighting had not yet occurred.
Recognizing the meaning and divining that it must be an American, the Sammies shouted back as they divided and gave the necessary room: "Oh, you Spaddy! What you doin' down so low? Rah for you! Bully boy! Rah, rah, rah! You're all right!" And on they went, comforted themselves, and comforting the weary, ammunitionless aviator who now recognized that his present job was about over.
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