. The adventures of an American doughboy . r jeans,But never did we get a chance To feel real mud till we hit France. Our shoes are deep in it, We often sleep in it,We almost weep in it— Its everywhere;We have to fight in it, And vent our spite in look a sight in it, But we dont care. We were boys—a long ways from home—and we wanted to beat up the Germans assoon as possible and get back home, and weintended to do it, mud or no mud, rain or norain. From somewhere, I never could quite figureit out, our troops seemed to get a supply ofinward strength and purpose that carried usthrough a lot


. The adventures of an American doughboy . r jeans,But never did we get a chance To feel real mud till we hit France. Our shoes are deep in it, We often sleep in it,We almost weep in it— Its everywhere;We have to fight in it, And vent our spite in look a sight in it, But we dont care. We were boys—a long ways from home—and we wanted to beat up the Germans assoon as possible and get back home, and weintended to do it, mud or no mud, rain or norain. From somewhere, I never could quite figureit out, our troops seemed to get a supply ofinward strength and purpose that carried usthrough a lot of hardships. When we reached our position in the woods,we pitched our pup tents and crawled intothem, wet as could be, and slept better than weever had on a feather-bed at home, the sleepof healthy exhaustion. Next day our outfits were completed andby night we were ready for the big drive, andas soon as it was dark we started out for theold trenches on the Alsace-Lorraine front. Talkabout rain! It came down in torrents that AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 63 We thought we were soaked the night before—but we must have been dreaming. It wasnta patching to this soaking. The old communica-tion trenches that we went through were some-thing awful—the mud was from six inches toa foot deep. Sometimes I wonder if thingsdont always seem worse out in the pitch-blackdarkness. We reached the front line trenches aboutmidnight, ready for our attack at dawn. At one oclock a. m., September 12th, it was,our artillery opened up on Fritz and hisgang, the most terrific shell-fire the world hadever known. All the thunder storms that everhappened on this old globe put together wouldntbegin to measure up to the noise that the greatAmerican artillery made that morning. That frontbilled as a quiet sector, too. We couldnt hearourselves think on our side, and no living thingcould last long on the other. The bombardmentlasted about four hours and it is claimed thatmore shells were fired in this battl


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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918