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.
