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114 from overseas had to wade as they pushed steadily on.

Then there were barbed wire defenses, sometimes twenty feet in height, with the hills and surrounding country villages fortified with acres of rapid-fire guns, often in vast nests, and requiring the work of batteries to blast them out of the path.

During all these days they had charged through villages, fought through morasses, forded swollen streams, bayoneted machine gunners at their posts, and used their rifles as clubs when they came to grips with the foe in the wire entanglements.

Hunger and thirst joined hands with the enemy. Gas attack followed charge, and charge succeeded gas attack. From overhead Boche planes rained bombs down upon them. Comrades fell on every hand, and the cries of the wounded rose above the shrieking of shrapnel and shell.

And day after day the young air-service boys rendered their full duty to the cause they stood for. Filled with the ardor that spurs patriots on to do astonishing feats they never shirked when the order came that sent them again and again into the air to measure wits with the Boche fliers.

Hardly a day but what there was a vacancy in the ranks of those gallant airmen who were so