Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II ON THE MOVE VER THERE" excitement was the normal condition, and the real soldier was never satisfied unless he was in the thick of the fight. Even "holding the line" on the Alsatian border was tame, and the news of Chateau-Thierry made the Ohio boys "green with envy." Their more fortunate guard comrades of the 26th and 42nd Divisions had covered themselves with glory. Where would the next American blow be struck? "Anything doing up at the front?" was the first question shot at every dispatch rider or truck driver who came "along the pike" from the north. "The whole d country is full of Yanks!" "Ten divisions packed in between Toul and Nancy." "Never saw so much ammunition in my life." "Couldn't get through for the traffic." Such reports kept the boys of the 37th on tiptoe of expectation. Would they get a chance for the "big push"? Imagine, therefore, the peculiar thrill of every man when about September 11, it was announced officially that the division was to be ready for an immediate move. The boys were to be "stripped" for action. Every unnecessary thing was thrown into the salvage pile. Military trains were placed on the sidings in the railway yards at Baccarat to be loaded with men, horses, and equipment. These trains to move off on schedule time, about two hours apart, until the last had taken its departure. For two nights steady streams of French troops, ammunition wagons, guns, and army trucks had poured into Baccarat on their way to relieve the various units of the Ohio Division. Four horses, two abreast, would be hitched to an artillery wagon on whichwas mounted a camouflaged '75 (three- inch gun). The heavy guns were drawn by six or eight horses, two abreast, with a rider for every two horses. The Y. M. C. A. headquarters were on the c...