Chapter I: Front Matter

WHAT OUTFIT, BUDDY?

What Outfit Buddy?
BY
T. HOWARD KELLY
FORMERLY PRIVATE IN THE 26TH DIVISION A.E.F.

Illustrated

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London

What Outfit Buddy?
Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1920

TO
PEG

CONTENTS

I. “What Outfit, Buddy?”
II. “Avey Vous de Chambre?”
III. “That Mule Was a Slacker”
IV. “Sunny France!”
V. We Was Off for the Front!
VI. American Joans of Arc
VII. The First Big Battle of the Guerre
VIII. “Guess I Didn’t Have the Guts”
IX. “The Old Van Seezeum on Its Way”
X. Château-Thierry
XI. A Craw de Guerre
XII. O. D. Meets Jimmy’s Gang
XIII. “We’re Goin’ to Take Metz”
XIV. “Well, We’re Here”
XV. Pinching Off the St.-Mihiel Salient
XVI. Beyond Verdun
XVII. “Finee! La Guerre Finee!”

ILLUSTRATIONS

She Kissed Me Smack on the Cheek and Said Her Name Was
Louise

“‘Take That Hat Off. It Isn’t Regulation,’ Says the Second
Looey to Me”

“Make Friends with the Cooties. Then You’re All Set”

“I Want to Get a Picture of O. D.’s Grave”

“A Bearded Poilu Came Tearing Out of a Ruined House, Waving
a Bottle Over His Head”

A great many impressionable young men who become soldiers overnight and go to war feel strongly inspired to write books about their adventures. I felt the same way before the newness of the life on the western front had been rubbed away by constant friction with some of the more monotonous things of war, such as hunger, cold, mud, cooties, and other romance-destroying agents. I buried the idea of writing a book just before my division was called upon to stand between the Boches and Paris during the trying days of July and August of 1918. It is very good for me that I detached myself from the desire to write a war book about that time. Experience proved that it was necessary to give all my available time to the business of fighting the _guerre_.

The book-bug never came my way again, for I do not look upon _What Outfit, Buddy?_ as the result of answering some insistent, invisible summons to write a war book. I did not intend writing a war book when I started the first line of _What Outfit, Buddy?_ I merely hoped to let Jimmy McGee, a real, regular fighting Yank who has seen his share of _la guerre_, tell the story of the things that he encountered as a member of the American Expeditionary Force. I sincerely trust that my original intentions have carried.

If I have allowed Jimmy McGee to tell you his story, then I have fulfilled my hopes, for I believe that Jimmy McGee’s story of the war is merely the universal version of the great adventure as held by legions of his comrades.

In my effort to let Jimmy tell his story I have not tried to use book language. I have used to the best of my ability the speech of men who became a real integral part of the _guerre_.... To do that it was necessary to let Jimmy and his comrades speak French in the manner of American soldiers. I tried to register the true value of their struggles with the difficult French language by resorting to phonetic spelling in the case of practically all French words which have become a part of the American Expeditionary Forces’ vocabulary. Students of the beautiful, musical language of France will, I trust, grant me this indulgence, as I have taken the liberties only in the desire to tell America how its fighting men overcame the difficulties presented by living side by side with a people who spoke a foreign language.

T. Howard Kelly.