This is the story of the Five Oh' Third

The Glorious exploits and adventures we undertook

It is 1916 when we arrived in France, My friends and I are all Americans; volunteers to join the British or French armies and to repel the German invader. What follow's are our accounts both official and unofficial for the remembrance of those who were there, and for those who came after us. I believe enough time as passed that no one in the British Government will begrudge the more dubious, misleading or somewhat unorthodox means with which we achieved the insane, impossible and sometimes terrible results which were needed at a time when the world ground to a halt over something as small and meaningless as one man being murdered in front of a sandwich shop...

Don't ask why I joined, or why anyone else joined the fact is that much like being in love, you rarely think too much about it when it happened. And afterwards contemplating it will only cause you to regret the roads not taken, to feel sorrow for the ones who are no longer here and to wonder whether or not you can move past what has taken place. Before the Great war, the war to end all wars; I was a college student at Colorado School of mines. My studies took me deep underground some times, as well as the library and mountain tops, I didn't live there before I started school so it was all very new to me. When word of the European's little war started we read everything in the papers that came, by the time I was nearing graduation there was a traveling Englishman who was a recruiter of sorts. And he made the case about how England and France were fighting for Democracy; That the German King and his alliance was one of inherited powers against those elected governments... Being a kid I ate it up, the fact the England was a nation with a king and queen, or that they were the largest / most expansive empire in the world was little to do with me.
France was ready to go to war with England over a great many things before they settled up against Germany, and the Russians; singly the largest nation ever by land mass and by population were a total monarchy set against the will of their people on nearly everything / while being allied with France and England. These were matters for older men to concern themselves with and too soon I found myself packing up my belongings from school to ship home. I had chosen to follow this man on his recruitment tour with a growing number of young men from colleges with technical learning. The promise of travel, adventure, some wealth and the much talked about french women was a great lure. We stayed in nice rooms at good hotels and met with other students while the trip was winding up. Dances, dinners and rented cars were all provided for us while he made his bid to hire up the best America had to help him defeat the Evil Empires of Europe.

We arrived at New York City, New York in spring of the year with several hundred young men from all over the country we called home. Most were just middle class kids looking for an adventure while living in a nation which was committed to staying out of someone else's fight. A few like me were hard studying, healthy and eager to see what the old world was really like. And a few were simply farm / shop kids who wandered into a meeting and sighed up before they knew what hit them. By the time were were inside the British Embassy taking an oath and sighing a contract it was too late to wonder about getting out of all this so we all took the plunge. Two weeks later we arrived in England, with a couple of crates to call our own and a head full of crazy ideas soon to be disproved by short and hard run in against reality.

After arrival there was a brief honeymoon period remaining in which we were toasted and boasted about London as the first wave of American Volunteers to bring a quick victory against a savage foe. Technology and bravery would beat the mechanical cunning and chemical / industrial might of the Kaiser they said.

While we were still walking and talking civilians I got to wander around the towns and meet the people, most were pretty great if a bid odd. It seems Every American is a cow boy, no matter where he was from or what his family did. And they never let you forget way back when; your family was certainly English, so really you kind of owed them and as a nation we were like a family member late for some holiday...

But anyway, there I was walking through England with some cash in my pocket and nothing to do for a day when I saw some people standing in line at a shop. I got into line too; wanting to know what it was they were waiting so eagerly for. The weather in England is very peculiar, If you lived in some parts of the Upper West Coast back home you might understand the idea that weather is both constant and shiftless in it's moods. England is like that, the "weather doesn't change" they'll tell you, but you start out your day with clear skies and a warm sun, but by noon it's bloody hot and by afternoon it's as muggy as any place in the south you care to name. At evening this fog just happens; it didn't come from anyplace but it just sort of pops into existence and then clings to everything. Cars can't see the stop lights, horses clattered down roads and I'll be damned if I ever learn how they could see where they were going...

I'm not like that; I've always known were I was and where I was going, just a talent you see; drop me in a hole deep underground and blind fold me. I know which way is up. I know which way is north and I can walk less than fifty feet before telling you which way I'm facing and if we'd be headed up or down... So I wandered into this line like I said, the weather was hot and stuffy but not too bad yet. And in front of me is a line of people which doesn't seem to move at all for ages. Then the fog sets in on us and you just stand there for ages if feels like wondering why you're even here. But I always know, some how that there's a reason for it and a path once taken had to be followed to its end, this leads me to my friends I'll tell you about a little later. But first I want to tell you about Mia Taylor. The fog as mentioned is like a glass of water after you've used it to wash paint brushes with, you can almost make out shapes but not enough to tell anything helpful about them, and that's when I bumped into her. Or she bumped into me, See some times when I concentrate I forget everything else in the world, when I was a kid I'd do it and simply think about something. At school when I had to study I could block out anything around me. And I was about to do it again waiting in line as this girl bounced off my back there by bringing me around suddenly. I shook my head looked around and saw her there on the sidewalk, basket in one hand and groceries all about. Apologizing as best I could and taking everything I saw there was little damage except for a dozen eggs which were basically ruined everything got back into the container again.

She made her own apologies, and hadn't seen me there at the back of the line with the fog setting about so suddenly. It seems that she too was lost in thought about something while walking to the butcher's shop.

I asked her if it was far, the butcher's shop and maybe I could go with her and buy something to replace the eggs which were destroyed?

She laughed in a lovely sweet voice and told me we were standing in front of the butcher's store, the line was because they were getting new meat today and everyone was hoping to buy up their quotas before everything sold out again.

Somewhat new to things I asked how could a store run out of meat like that? Surely he could simply buy more and put it on the shelf every day.

And again my being an American was overwhelmingly noticeable to those present, several chuckled and made jokes about how easy was it for an American to buy bacon and beans when he had no family to feed and no one was shooting at him or trying to sink his boats.

It hadn't really settled in that England was at war, after all the front lines were hundreds of miles away on the continent... It was a much vaughted fact that England's navy was second to none, so who could pose a threat to them now and how was this related to the purchase of beef?

I soon learned that England could only supply a small portion of their foods and consumable goods domestically and had basically imported the majority of the things which they needed to make a great many things people needed regularly. I also learned that in peace time, everything in England is expensive too.

Take a soda, one bottle of Coca Cola is about ten cents in America where I was visiting before we left. You can get them cold on ice for that price.

In England it costs Five pennies; while we American's think "What a deal sign me up for Two!"

Their money is I was told, worth about four times more than ours and thus my drink was already twice as expensive as any I bought at home. Making matters worse, the English had a pathological aversion drinking anything cold it seemed. In pubs ( a bar ) the English order a pint of beer which is always served warm in fact they refuse to drink anything which is "cold or chilly". Hot beer I tell you, it's revolting and American's will never adjust to it any more than driving on the wrong side of the road, their completely random money names and values or how you have to address everyone as if you were in primary school or church.

But there was Mia Taylor, and while we waited some kid came round selling candies of some kind for "thruppence" each and still adjusting to things I bought a couple for Mia and I to enjoy while the waiting game was dragged out yet longer. Also; no one in the whole of the British Isles speaks the English Language, no matter who they are or where they come from. You had as much chance of understanding a Scottish Lecturer on the natures of Latin names for the high land grasses as you did some Welsh coal miners ( there were many of them at boot camp I learned later) or the Irish who frankly were among the most enjoyable and frank people you could hope to meet. Even people who called themselves English couldn't share a conversation unless they'd lived within stones throwing distance of each other.

    There was a bloke, as they say. A bloke who was here from Manchester to see his dear sister married to a fella from London and another older woman born and raised since King George her family lived ere' anda went to church there'... None of them could actually carry out a single conversation without some mild remark about accents, or regional dialects. A man from Texas, Georgia and the city of New Orleans can talk to a man from St. Paul or the five neighborhoods of New Yorkers without half as much trouble as the English seem to suffer when conversing over the weather.

I digressed.

Mia Taylor is amazing.

She was in her early twenties and unmarried. Which caused some fuss among several of the older ladies who asked if there was something wrong that she wasn't yet married off to some local boy before they were all off to the war and "french women"... It seems the English loath the French, allies or not the French men are not to be trusted as house guests and their women are all out to seduce good English boys for it seemed the spinsters all had a family member who got lost over the Dover cliffs and couldn't come home after Paris.

But Mia, she was perfectly conversant to dissemble with the spinsters about the young men she had courted were at Eaton, Oxford or Sandhurst. And none of them were serious enough for her to throw it all away after a few kind words about her eyes or hair... And they generally left her alone after that.

Then the line moved, eventually we made our way into the meat shoppe' which was as packed and raucous as men around a basement boxing match. Money waved in one hand while the other gestured and motioned their voices called out in odd pitch for the attention of an overwhelmed father / son pair of shop keepers. I laughed at the sight of it being so odd to me. So Mia wades into it as sure and calm as a bull rider takes his place in line before the ride; walked right up to the counter and then walked out with two pounds of bacon, three of pork chops and some cut of beef I'd never heard of yet. Paid for it in a bewildering selection of coins and then side walks her way through the mass of aged mothers and other ladies as easily as if it were a dance to her. That was when I knew I like Mia Taylor, she was special and she wasn't just some pretty faced foreign girl I met in a park one day.