had seen our comrades die in an awful horror. We had had our sergeants
crucified, and we were outnumbered ten to one. After all this, and after
all the Hell through which we had passed from six that morning until after
two, when we reached the enemy trench and presented the bright ends of our
bayonets, Mr. Fritz went down on his knees and cried, "_Kamerad! Kamerad!_"

What did we do? We did exactly what you would have done under like
circumstances. "_Kamerad!_"--Bah!

There is no doubt that the German soldier is a good soldier as far as he
goes. He is good in a charge and if he had not done the despicable
things--the dreadful outrages which he has done--he could be admired as a
fighting machine. But there is one department where we of the Allies have
him licked to a frazzle. Talk to any man who has been out there and he will
say the same. The German soldier can not hold in a hand-to-hand fight. He
can't face the cold steel. The second he glimpses the glint of a bayonet he
is whimpering and asking for mercy.

The German bayonet is a fiendish weapon. It is well its owner can not use
it. For myself I do not know of one case where a comrade has been wounded
by enemy steel. His bayonet is longer than ours, and from the tip for a few
inches is a saw edge. This facilitates entrance into the body, but on
turning to take it out it tears and rends savagely.

It is impossible to describe the work of every battalion in a battle. In a
charge, a concerted charge, such as we went through on April twenty-third,
there was not one battalion that did better than another. There was not one
officer who did better than another, there was not one man who outdistanced
his fellow in valor. We all fought like the devil. It is only possible to
convey the doings of the whole by telling the achievements of the few.