one part to run the canteen, another to organize a temporary canteen on the grounds of the evacuation hospital, and still another to maintain the rolling canteen at the railway station.  The streets were almost blocked with refugees.  I saw one unconscious woman in a wheelbarrow being trundled by a boy.  Regiments went through, going up to the front, the men’s faces stern and set.  The sound of the battle grew louder and louder.

[Sidenote:  An airplane sweeps the street with a machine gun.]

That night we bundled our bedding into the Ford camion, and slept in one of the deep champagne caves.  I had volunteered to go on duty at the canteen at six the next morning, and arriving there on time, found two or three hundred tired and hungry men waiting for the doors to open.  The night before a great thermos marmite had been filled with boiling coffee, and we were able to begin feeding the men without delay.  All day we did a tremendous business.  About half past nine a German plane came over, tried to bomb us, and swept the street with a machine gun.  We continued serving and pouring out coffee.  The aviator killed a woman and child who were standing in a garden, and then one of our machine guns got him.  The plane, a three passenger one, came tumbling down into the public square.  The pilot was caught with both legs under the engine and was badly hurt, but the observer and the gunner were uninjured.  An infuriated Frenchman, who had seen the killing of the woman and child, rushed up and killed the gunner as they lifted him out.  I got these facts from an American staff car driver who assisted in extricating the pilot.  That morning, our guns got three German planes.

[Sidenote:  A German shell hits twenty-seven.]

At one that afternoon I left the canteen, and went home for the bath which I had missed that morning.  I had just finished dressing when a German shell passed over the house, killing, as they said, twenty-seven persons.

[Sidenote:  The distant thunder of battle.]

I elected to stay over night at the hotel instead of going to the champagne cave.  No sound disturbed the night except the distant thunder of the battle and the bursting of shells which were falling about a thousand yards short of the town.  The Germans were trying to destroy the bridge over the Marne, to cut our communication with Rheims, but they did not have the range.

Copyright, The Forum, November, 1918.

* * * * *

Volumes of detailed narrative could not sum up more graphically what the American Army did in France than did the summary written by General Pershing, presented in the following pages.

THE AMERICAN ARMY IN EUROPE

GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING

[Sidenote:  Organization of the American army.]