Excerpt from The History of Company B, 311th Infantry, in the World War<br><br>You, my comrades of the past two years, for whom this history is written, know that I have but small gift of expression at any time, and least of all for the things closest to my heart. At your request, however, made when we parted for the last time, I am writing the story of our company. I shall do my best to put down everything as it occurred, so far as my knowledge and memory will serve; and I trust that if the matter is true, you will overlook crudeness in the form.<br><br>Company B, 311th Infantry - Only a letter and a number? Only one company out of the hundreds in the National Army? Yes, to outsiders; but to me, and I trust and believe to you, Company B was a living and vital being, composed of part of what was best in each of us. Its official life was twenty months; in that time it was born, grew to full strength, was trained, travelled some 7500 miles, fulfilled its destiny - fought, suffered, lost; and finally re turned to its birthplace and was mustered out. But the spirit of B Company is still with each of us, and not a man but has carried away more than he gave.<br><br>Relatively, B Company was a very small part of the army. But to us, it was the army; just as we shall always think of the war in terms of St. Mihiel and the Argonne. We have heard of the Marne, Ypres, Verdun, Chateau Thierry; but every man sees the war through his own eyes.<br><br>For this reason, I am writing in the first person. The best I can do is to relate things as I saw them so I shall not take refuge behind an artificial impersonality. Probably a good many things were pulled off that I did not know anything about. And then you may discover that I knew more about some little matters than you thought I did.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.