And they knew how to use those guns, too.  Our engineering and pioneer corps at that time were non-existent.  We had practically none.  The Germans would put over a few shells during the day.  They would level our sandbag breastworks and blow our frail shelters to smithereens.  We had no dugouts and no communication trenches.  With a shell of tremendous power they would rip up yards of our makeshift defenses and kill half a dozen of our boys.  Sometimes we would groan aloud and pray to see a few German legs and arms fly to the four winds as compensation.  But no.  We would wire back to artillery headquarters:  “For God’s sake, send over a few shells, even one shell, to silence this hell!” And day after day the same answer would come back:  “Heaven knows we are sorry, but you’ve had your allotment of shells for to-day.”

Perhaps one shell, or it may have been three, would have been the ammunition ration of our particular front for the day.

It was nobody’s fault at the moment of fighting.  It lay perhaps between those who had anticipated and prepared for war for forty years and those who had neglected to foresee the possibility of such an enterprise.  The fact remained, we had no shells.

Every day our defenses were leveled.  Every night we would crawl out, after long hours spent flat on our stomachs, covered to the neck in mud and blood, and endeavor to repair the damage.  Every night we lost a few men; every day we lost a few men, and still we held our ground.

The day casualties were the worst.  The wounded men had to lie in the damp and dirt until night came to shelter them; then some one would help, or if that were not possible, the wounded would have to make his own pain-strewn way back to a dressing station.  During the day some one might discover that he had developed a frozen toe.  He could get no relief; he dare not attempt to leave his partial shelter.  The slightest movement, and the enemy would have closed his career.  By night his foot would be a fiery torture, and by the time a doctor was near enough to help it would be a rotting mass of gangrene, and one man more would be added to the list of permanent cripples.

I am asked, “How did you live?  How did you ’carry on’?”

Many a time I have said to myself in thinking of the enemy:  “Why don’t they come on—­why don’t the fools strike now?  There’s no earthly reason why they should not defeat us, and roll on triumphantly to Paris, to Calais, to London, to New York, and so realize their original intention.”  There was no earthly reason.  No.

The Kaiser had talked in lordly voice of “ME and God.”  The Kaiser has manufactured a God of his own fancy, a God of blood and iron.  There is no such God for us.  For us, there was always that Unseen Hand which held back the enemy in his might.  The All Highest who is not on the side of blood and murder and pillage and outrage and violation; the Almighty, who, crudely though I may express it, is with those who fight for the Right and on the square.