Excerpt from Our First Ten Thousand It is the custom for a man to tell the public why he presumes to address them, but perhaps in the present crisis a real 'war book' need not apologize for itself. Let me say simply that I had the honor and privilege, as a member of General Pershing's Headquarters Company, to be among the first ten thousand American soldiers on French soil, but was disabled before the Americans went into active engagement with the enemy. With no pretence to literary excellence or to logical order I have written out my exper iences, closely following my diary, which I kept religiously. For Obvious reasons I have passed very quickly over the horrors Of the trenches, for it is not the Obj ect Of this little volume to brutalize its readers with heart-rending details Of the fear ful slaughter that is going on. It is enough to know that it exists: we are supplied with too many ghastly details by the daily newspapers. I have tried to picture France as I saw her after her first three years Of fighting, and especially to describe her reception Of our troops and our first months Of preparation in her hospitable8 Foreword. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.