Back of Florent, in the Argonne Forest,
Were gathered a handful of men,
Waiting the word to "go in" once more;
To come out---God alone knew when.

East met West in those few short hours,
And were drawn together as one,
As brother to brother, and man to man,
They met to suppress the Hun.

Each of them were thinking thots,
That come to but very few men,
Tomorrow they'd go "Over the Top,"
Some never to come back again.

The air and trees were full of sounds,
As we started "in" that night;
With dull heavy thud of feet on the ground,
We went marching towards the fight.

To an open space in the road we came,
And God! what a sight we did see!
The skyline ablaze with one great red flame;
'Twas our barrage for Democracy.

Sh-h! Hush! Make no noise,
For we're "Going In" real soon,
And you could almost hear the heartbeats,
As we crept in platoon by platoon.

Soon we reached those barren trenches,
And we breathed a silent prayer,
As we settled down and waited,
Through an endless night "Up There."

At eleven P. M. that eventful night,
Our barrage opened up with a flare;
The earth it trembled and shook in fright,
And death just leaped through the air.

God! how those endless minutes dragged,
They seemed forever and aye,
As we lay there waiting in the cold,
For dawn and break of day.

At last five-thirty, the "Zero Hour" came,
And the word passed down the line;
"Go Over the Top," and "Play the Game,"
"And break their damn Kremhilde line."

What did we find when "Over the Top",
In that waste called "No Man's Land"?
An ocean of wire in the mist and the fog,
Placed there by the devil's own hand.

All day long we pushed him back,
By night we'd his second line trench;
Then we "dug in," and waited for him,
By morn, with the rain we were drenched.

The men were gaunt with hunger,
For what food. we had was gone,
But there was the "Boche" ahead of us,
So we pushed on, and on and on!

Were you ever out on the battlefields
With the dead just stacked all around,
The earth in a tremble from fear and fright
Of the blood on its sacred ground?

While comrades you loved as brothers, and more,
Lay wounded, and moaning in pain,
In your heart a gnawing emptiness;
Was that costly price worth the gain?

Three days we went, till our strength was spent,
'Mid sights too terrible to tell,
By the time we were caught in a trap that night,
I can tell you, we'd all seen hell.

Exhausted from fighting and dead for sleep,
We dug ourselves in for the night,
And as we lay there 'neath the shell-split air,
We felt 'twas the end of our fight.

At break of dawn the "Boche" closed in,
But we met him face to face,
And many there were who fell that day,
Yet night found us still in our place.

For three long days we fought in that trap,
In mud clear up to our knees,
Sleepless, hungry, dying from thirst,
'Neath those splintered Argonne trees.

All hopes gone, our hearts in despair,
When a whisper came down the line,
At last the longed-for relief had arrived,
God knows it came just in time.

We went at the food like a pack of wolves,
That had starved the whole winter through,
And between the munching of bites you'd, hear,
Mumbled prayers---and curses, too.

No one could picture, try as they might,
The horror and hell of it all.,
Our Company lost ninety men that night,
Yet it mattered as nothing at all.

But on and an we carried the fight,
And we crushed the best they had,
We gained our objective---were trapped again,
Then we went mad-fighting mad.

On the side of a cliff two hundred feet high,
We dug in like so many moles,
Death was the penalty that was paid,
Should you stick your head from those holes.

Did you ever lay out in the cold all night,
When the frost just creeps through the air?
When death and misery stalks thru the night,
Like a giant bat of despair?

If you have, then perhaps you can sense,
Of the things I'm trying to tell,
And why every man who came out alive,
Could say that he'd lived through hell.

Fighting all day, holding out by pure grit,
And fighting at night by the flare,
The suffering we bore can never be told,
Of those six days and nights spent there.

Death thinned our ranks, took tenfold her toll,
Of our buddies, your brothers and sons,
But before they went, tho their strength was: spent,
They took their share of the Huns.

Relief came at last as it always does
When you're backed by red-blooded men;
But we were so weak, so many were gone,
Nothing mattered at all by then.

We stumbled out more dead than alive,
To food, shelter and rest,
While others tenderly cared for those,
Who had passed to eternal rest.

The price was made and the price was paid,
And as part of the cost of war,
"Our Company went in two-fifty strong,
And came out with but forty and four." 

by "Buck Private" McCollum

'Tis not the bit of bronze and metal,
That tells the time-worn tale,
Of some act of heroism
Where bullets whine and wail.

Nor are the colored ribbons,
Pinned on some strutting chest,
Always truthful indicators,
Of the men who fought the best.

Nor do gold stripes upon the arm
Always tell the story,
Of men who have seen action
Or fought their way to glory.

These are outward indications
Made by the hand of man,
Way they're sometimes passed about,
Is hard to understand.

They will tarnish with the weather,
In the plush or on the shelf,
For the real and lasting medal,
Is the soul within yourself

Did you do your best when called on,
In the air or torn shell-hole,
You've got some real satisfaction,
Buried deep within your soul.

No bit of bronze or ribbon bright,
Or words of praise high spoken,
Can change the thots that lie within,
They are the genuine tokens.

Telling the tale as long as you live,
And the truth of how you fought,
If you played the game with all you had,
You've the medal that can't be bought

by "Buck Private" McCollum