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So slow was McGee’s recovery that it was the middle of September before he received his final discharge from the hospital and was given orders to rejoin his old squadron, now operating in the St. Mihiel salient. Three days prior to his release the American Army, operating on a purely American front, had attacked the Germans in the St. Mihiel salient with such determined vigor, and the entire preparation conducted with such successful secrecy, as to take the Germans by complete surprise, overrun all opposition and recover for France many miles of territory long held by the invaders. Thousands of prisoners, and arms of all calibre, were captured in the swift stroke, and all France was ringing with praise of the endeavor.

News of the progress of the battle reached McGee just before his final discharge. He entertained high hopes of rejoining the squadron in time to participate in the feast of victory, but by the 15th, three days after the battle was begun, the salient had been pinched out and the battle won.

216On the 16th, when McGee reached Ligny-en-Barrois, which had served as General Pershing’s field headquarters at the beginning of the operation, he found that his squadron had been withdrawn from the sector and sent somewhere else.

Where? No one seemed to know. Furthermore, no one seemed to care a great deal. A pilot lost from his squadron, or a soldier lost from his regiment, was no new thing in France. It happened daily. Men were discharged from hospitals, ordered to a certain point to rejoin their commands, only to discover on reaching there that the outfit had seemingly vanished in thin air.

McGee spent a full day trying to find someone with the correct information as to the location of the squadron.

At last an officer on the General Staff looked over McGee’s papers and gave him a transportation order to a little town west and south of Verdun.

“Is my squadron there, sir?” McGee asked.

“They should be,” the officer replied. “At least near there,” and he closed the conversation as though that were quite enough for any pilot to know.

But when McGee reached the town, part of the journey being by rail and part by motor lorries, he found himself as completely lost as possible. Again no one seemed to know anything about the squadron. His search was made doubly difficult by the fact that 217there was an unusual air of activity; all the troops seemed to be on the move, and officers were far too busy with their own cares to listen to the troubles of a lost aviator.

That night McGee watched two or three regiments pass through the town, fully equipped for battle. It came to him, suddenly, that all this activity and night marching could mean only one thing–a new attack along some new front. Encouraged by the success of St. Mihiel, the Americans were going in again. But where? McGee put the question to a dozen officers, and not one of them had the foggiest notion of where he was going.

This served all the more to convince McGee that a new operation was being secretly planned by Great Headquarters, and from the many different divisional insignias which he had noticed, he felt convinced that it would be a major offensive. Regiment after regiment of soldiers marched through the little village; then came lumbering guns and caissons clattering over the resounding cobblestones of the street. Battery after battery passed by. They were followed by a long train of motor transports; then came some hospital units with their motor ambulances; then more infantrymen, singing and joking as they swung along in the darkness.

Watching them, McGee was suddenly seized with an idea which no amount of logical thinking could exclude 218from his mind. Where these troops were going, there he would find action. Somewhere, between this point and their final stopping place, the trenches, he would find some unit of the air force. The army must have its eyes, and any member of any air unit could tell him more than he could learn here.

The spirit of this new type of adventure moved him to action. He had often wondered about the life of the doughboy. Now, for the night, he would fall in and march along with them. It would be fun just to be going along, answerable to no one and making his way forward on foot, by hooked rides, or by whatever means that presented itself and seemed attractive.

Slinging his musette bag over his shoulder, and buttoning up his flying coat, he stepped into the street, followed along the dark buildings for a few yards and then fell in alongside a long line of infantrymen.

A mile beyond the edge of the town he regretted his action. Rain began to fall in torrents. Ponchos were quickly donned by the men and they again took up the splashing, sloshing line of march, grumbling a little, joking about “Sunny France,” and complaining over the harsh order that forbade smoking.

From that one thing McGee knew for a certainty that they were being sent forward under orders of the utmost secrecy. Men on the line of march under cover of darkness were never allowed to smoke. An 219enemy airman, should he pass over, would see a long line of twinkling fireflies. From that he would know there was some sort of movement, and this information would be speedily carried to the German High Command. So, without displaying any lights whatsoever, the men and motors moved ever forward along the muddy road.

The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come. The night was warm, for September, and grey fog wraiths began rising from the ground. The sweating horses, straining at the big heavy guns at the side of the road, were blanketed in steam.

The traffic on the pitch black road was becoming increasingly heavy, and now and again halts were made until someone, far ahead, succeeded in working out the snarl. Then the troops would move forward again.

McGee no longer had any doubts concerning what was in store for these thousands upon thousands of men, but he was beginning to question the wisdom of his own move. He made no attempt to engage anyone in conversation, fearing that it would result in some officious commander ordering him to the rear.

Far ahead, against the black night sky, flashes of gunfire showed now and then, the following thunder establishing the fact that the front was within three or four hours’ marching time. The gunfire, however, was not heavy, being merely the spasmodic firing incident 220to such nights as communiques spoke of as “calm.”

After another hour of marching, McGee noticed that they were on the edge of a shattered village. Not one single wall stood intact. As he reached the center of this stark skeleton of a once happy village he saw that here the enemy had concentrated their fire. Here was a wall, standing gaunt and grim against the night sky; and over there, facing a little square, a shattered church still retained the strength to hold aloft its cross-capped steeple. The Cross ... in a broken, blood-red world!

McGee slowed his pace, gradually, and dropped from the line of march. He had considered himself fully recovered, but the last hour had sapped his small reserve of strength. He seated himself on a pile of stone in the dark corner of a protecting wall and wiped his brow. What with the long, hot march, and the steam arising from the soaked earth, he was wringing wet. The experience had served to increase his respect for these plodding doughboys who considered this as only one more night like dozens of others they had experienced.

Sitting there on the damp, cold stone, McGee considered his position. This town, battered by shell fire, would be forward of any position taken up by a pursuit group. To push on would be but to retrace his steps. It would also be folly, for he had no gas 221mask. Shells had reached this town before, and they might do so again. He was willing to take a chance with flying shrapnel, but deadly gas was something else again.

He decided, therefore, to make his way to the edge of the town, find shelter if possible, and await the coming of dawn. Daylight, he reasoned, would be certain to bring him in sight of planes from some group, operating on this front, and if he could locate a ’drome his problem would be near solution.

He made his way back along the lines of infantrymen, artillery, ambulances and wagon trains until he reached an old stone stable that had miraculously escaped destruction.

Having no light, he groped around in the black interior, seeking a place where he might spread his coat for a bed. He stumbled against a ladder, which mounted upward into the cavernous mow of a loft. He climbed the creaking rungs, found footing on the dry floor, and stopped to sniff at the odor of the few wisps of dry, musty hay scattered thinly over the rough boards. He took a step forward, stumbled over a pair of legs and landed headfirst on the stomach of another sleeper.

“Whoosh!” went the escaping breath of that truant soldier, followed by an angry outpouring of abuse.

“Say, soldier! Get your foot out of my face! What do you think this is–a football game?”

222“Pipe down!” came a gruff voice from another corner. “Do you want some smart Looie to come up here and chase us out?”

McGee smiled, wondering what would be their reaction should he announce that “a Looie” was even now in their presence. Perhaps it was his duty, as an officer, to rout them out and order them to rejoin their commands, but he felt no responsibility for these men of the line, and if they were as weary and sleepy as he–and doubtless they had more reason to be–then he could hardly blame them for falling out. With the morning, he knew, these army-wise soldiers would go down the road until they found their outfits and there pour forth a plausible lie about becoming lost in the tangle and how they had searched all night for their company.

McGee knew little enough about the American infantrymen, but he did know that “for tricks that are vain” Bret Harte’s famous heathen Chinee had nothing on the average soldier of the line, be he American, English, French or a black man from Senegal.

Cautiously he felt out a clear space, spread his coat over the rough timbers and w............