London to Paris it
held, through the centuries, "the even tenor of its way."

Here had the painter ever found color and form for his canvas; the
romanticist, theme and character for his story. In the deep-voiced
caverns of these towering cliffs lived the Pirates of Penzance. The
solitude of yonder St. Malo inspired Chateaubriand with his immortal
"Monks of the West"; and Morlix, just east of Brest, was, in days of
peace, the dwelling place of peerless Marshal Foch.

By nightfall all the troops had been ferried to the wharfs and formed by
companies in the railroad yards along the water front.

Promptly at five o'clock, with headquarters troop at the head of the
column, Colonel Taylor and all officers on foot, we began our march to
Ponteneuson Barracks. Each of us, on leaving the Leviathan, had been
rationed with a sandwich. We had hoped to dejeuner on the wharf before
beginning the march, but such was not our good fortune--the single
sandwich was all the food--or drink for that matter--we tasted until ten
o'clock the following morning.

The march of eight torturous, hill-climbing, miles, while exhausting in
the extreme, was not without interest. It brought us within seeing and
speaking distance of the inhabitants. A group of little boys and girls
trudged along at our side singing what they no doubt believed to be our
Marseillaise, "Cheer, cheer, the gang's all here." The shrill voices of
these petit garcons expressed our only bienvenue to France!

Their elders, in their quaint Breton Sunday costumes, sitting on
doorsteps or grouped along the roadsides, viewed us interestedly, but
quietly and without demonstration. Although it was the highway used by
thousands of American troops passing through Brest, we heard no word of
cheer, nor saw a single banner of welcome in those eight weary miles of
back torture under full packs.

At nine o'clock we arrived at Ponteneuson. Well might this place be
called, at least at that time, the vestibule of hell! If there is any
boy of the A. E. F. who has anything good to say--or the slightest
happy memory to recall--of Ponteneuson, I have yet to meet him.

It was officially called a "Rest Camp"--where we might recuperate from
our long confinement on shipboard. But if lying hungry and cold on the
fog-drenched rocks of Brittany, with a chill wind sweeping up from the
neighboring ocean, freezing the very marrow of one's aching bones, be
considered rest, it was a kind entirely new to us.