Jed's Boy: A Story of Adventures in the Great World War

Shortly after the incidents narrated in the foregoing chapter, I, with several others, among them Jot and Sam, was granted a leave of absence of fifteen days to visit our homes....

I, with others, was billeted in a house and barn tenanted by a little French woman with a brood of several young children, whose husband was fighting for France. Others were bil...

A few days after this meeting we saw, while hiding in some woods, German artillery moving over near-by roads, and by this inferred that we were near the German lines, and that t...

“See here!” said our burly top sergeant, “the Boches have made a call on us, and it seems to me it is up to us to return it, as is usual in polite society.”

When the saddle was brought in, I told the colonel what Jot had written about ripping it open. With a smile which I could not interpret, he cut the stitches with his pocket knif...

Our first view of the land we had come to rescue was not prepossessing. Some men were standing on the sidewalks, as we marched through the narrow street ankle deep in mud.

It was currently reported that the Germans were about to launch a new attack. Anticipating, in advance, a decisive victory for their arms, they designated the contemplated attac...

Our friendship had grown stronger since entering the army, and we had kept it up by frequent intercourse; both by meetings and by exchange of notes back and forth by Muddy. When...

Its size astonished me. It was a city of barracks. Broad streets designated by letters, with each barrack numbered, stretched out in endless succession, covering hundreds of acr...

The next morning, when we resumed our march on the heels of the retreating enemy, I was unaccountably depressed. I felt that I was standing on the verge of calamity. I will ackn...

Several sick and wounded men were returned from the hospital as fit for duty. Among these was Private Beaudett, whose hurt had been a clean gun shot wound which was not entirely...

I was then a lad, trying to fill his father’s place on the farm. I had just finished milking when I heard Bill Jenkins, our hired man, call out in rasping tones, “No, there’s no...

I was heartily congratulated by officers and comrades, on receiving the _Croix de Guerre_. I would have liked to wear it at once; but rules are rules, and I decided to wait till...

No sky is perfect without a few clouds; but we had an overshadowing one because we did not get letters from home. There had been complaint ever since the American Expeditionary...

“It is plain to me,” said Gordon, “that you are not a hunter, and have never stalked deer as I have often done. If it had been a Boche instead of me, you would have been capture...

“Whatever else you may believe of me, my dearest friend, I am true to you. I do not deny that what I have done may have justly brought upon me the stigma of disloyalty. We can n...

Infantry, artillery, machine-guns, and other branches of the service were awaiting the resumption of the great German drive, by which the enemy were hoping to obtain a victoriou...

It was October, 1916. The harvests were gathered, and the fall ploughing was done; the frost was in the ground, and the hills were ablaze with the scarlet and gold of Autumn.

The end of the German drive on the western front, as my readers know, had failed to break the Allied lines. The enemy, however, had succeeded in driving them back for miles, inf...

Upon my return to the front I found that our forces had been reinforced by new regiments. American troops, we were told, were arriving in great numbers. This information was hai...

I was awakened by a tumult of voices, and by men stumbling over me. So sound had been my sleep that at first I did not recognize my surroundings. A throng of new prisoners was c...

The desertion of Lieutenant Nickerson was the subject of many ugly remarks. A few asserted that they had suspicions from their first acquaintance with him that he was disloyal;...

The German soldiers, who were guarding me, seemed to be decent sort of men, and treated me fairly well, as soldiers who have been fighting each other usually act. All through my...

The weather was warm and moist, something like our dog days, though cooler at night and during the morning hours. Our guard of six were old or war-worn soldiers, inclined to be...

In reply, he translated from a French newspaper he held in his hand, the message of General Pershing tendering to General Foch all the American forces as follows: “_I come to sa...

The British army under Haig had struck a staggering blow at Ludendorff’s northern lines, and had driven him back in defeat. This had seemingly withdrawn the German attention, or...

The winter school had closed, and my spring work on the farm had begun. Boys of my age in New England, at least farmer boys, did not, as a rule, attend school in summer: it was...

The bullet that put me in the hospital for several weeks had struck the fleshy part of my hip, glanced off from the bone, and had been extracted from the side. While a clean wou...

The men of our regiment were falling in line, and my company had already formed, as I took my place on its right awaiting orders to advance. The bugle rang out and the advance b...