lank was instructed to rewrite his letter in English and address it to
some friend who could translate it into German for his father. As the
door closed on this American soldier of German extraction, I asked the
Captain, "Do you think Germain could stand for Blank's German name,
after all she has lost at the hands of the Germans?"

"She'll probably be wearing it proudly around Cincinnati within a year
after the war is over," the Captain replied.

It might be reassuring at this point to remark that girls in America
really have no occasion to fear that many of our soldiers will leave
their hearts in France. The French women are kind to them, help them in
their French lessons, and frequently feed them with home delicacies
unknown to the company mess stoves, but every American soldier overseas
seems to have that perfectly natural hankering to come back to the girls
he left behind.

The soldier mail addressed daily to mothers and sweethearts back in the
States ran far into the tons. The men were really homesick for their
American women folks. I was aware of this even before I witnessed the
reception given by our men to the first American nurses to reach the
other side.

The hospital unit to which they belonged had been transported into that
training area so quickly and so secretly that its presence there was
unknown for some time. I happened to locate it by chance.

Several of us correspondents seeking a change of diet from the
monotonous menu provided by the hard-working madam of our modest
hostelry, motored in a new direction, over roads that opened new vistas
in this picture book of the world.

Long straight avenues of towering trees whose foliage roofed the
roadways were sufficient to reanimate recollections of old masters of
brush realism. Ploughed fields veiled with the low-hanging mist of
evening time, and distant steeples of homely simplicity faintly glazed
by the last rays of the setting sun, reproduced the tones of "The
Angelus" with the over-generous hugeness of nature.

And there in that prettiest of French watering places--Vittel--we came
upon those first American nurses attached to the American Expeditionary
Forces. They told us that all they knew was the name of the place they
were in, that they were without maps and were not even aware of what
part of France they were located in.

It developed that the unit's motor transportation had not arrived and,
other automobiles being as scarce as German flags,