PREFACE

These Sketches were made during a year's service as a camion driver with
the French amry in the Chemin-des-Dames sector and a year's service with
the A.E.F. as an infantry private on special duty with "The Stars and
Stripes," the official A.E.F. newspaper. Most of them were drawn at odd
minutes during the French push of 1917 near Fort Malmaison, at loading
parks and along the roadside while on truck convoy, and while on special
permission to draw and paint with the French army given me by the Grand
Quartier Gènèral during the time I was stationed at Soissons. The rest
were drawn on American fronts from the Argonne to Belgium as my duties
took me from one offensive to another.

It has been a keen regret to me that my artistic skill has been so
unequal to these opportunites. The sketches do not sufficiently show
war for the stupid horror I know it to be.

I hope, however, they may serve as a record of doughboy types, of the
people he lived with in France, with whom he suffered and by whose side
he fought.

Many appeared first in "The Stars and Stripes," "Leslie's Weekly", and
"Scribner's Magazine", through the courtesy of whose editors I am now
enabled to reprint them.

C. LeRoy Baldridge