communication with
the nearby camps had been almost non-existent. Orders had been received
from field headquarters and acknowledged, but its relation in distance
or direction to their whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. But not for
long.

Soon the word spread through the training area that American nurses had
a hospital in the same zone and some of the homesick Yanks began to make
threats of self-mutilation in order that they might be sent to that
hospital.

The hospital unit was soon followed by the arrival of numerous American
auxiliary organisations and the kindly activities of the workers as well
as their numbers became such as to cause the men to wonder what kind of
a war they were in.

I happened to meet an old top sergeant of the regular army, a man I had
known in Mexico, with the American Punitive Expedition. He had just
received a large bundle of newspapers from home and he was bringing
himself up-to-date on the news. I asked him what was happening back
home.

"Great things are going on in the States," he said, looking up from his
papers. "Here's one story in the newspaper that says the Y. M. C. A. is
sending over five hundred secretaries to tell us jokes and funny
stories. And here's another account about the Red Cross donating half a
million dollars to build recreation booths for us along the front. And
here's a story about a New York actor getting a committee of
entertainers together to come over and sing and dance for us. And down
in Philadelphia they're talking about collecting a million dollars to
build tabernacles along the front so's Billy Sunday can preach to us.
What I'm wondering about is, when in hell they're going to send the army
over."

But that was in the early fall of 1917, and as I write these lines now,
in the last days of 1918, I am aware and so is the world, that in all of
France nobody will ever ask that question again.

That army got there.

CHAPTER V

MAKING THE MEN WHO MAN THE GUNS

While our infantry perfected their training in the Vosges, the first
American artillery in France undertook a schedule of studies in an old
French artillery post located near the Swiss frontier. This place is
called Valdahon, and for scores of years had been one of the training
places for French artillery. But during the third and fourth years of
the war nearly all of the French artillery units being on the front, all
subsequent drafts of French artillerymen received their training un