o and didn't want to leave her and he knew I didn't have a girl
and didn't give a damn where I went, or was sent, so long as it was with
the army. He put up the proposition of mutual exchange being permitted
under regulations.

"He wanted to take my place in San Antonio and give me his assignment in
Honolulu, which I must say looked mighty good in those days to anybody
who was tired of Texas. I didn't think then we'd ever come to war and
besides it didn't make much difference to me one way or the other where
I went. But instead of accepting the proposition right off the reel, I
told Jim we'd flip a coin to decide.

"If it came tails, he would go to Honolulu. If it came heads, I would go
to Honolulu. He flipped. Tails won. I'm in France and poor Jim is out
there in Honolulu tending the Ukulele crop with prospects of having to
stay there for some time. Poor devil, I got a letter from him last week.

"Do you know, man knows no keener joy in the world than that which I
have to-night. Here I am in France at the head of two hundred and fifty
men and horses and the guns and we're rolling up front to kick a dent in
history. The poor unfortunate that ain't in this fight has almost got
license to shoot himself. Life knows no keener joy than this."

It was a long speech for our captain, but his words expressed not only
the feeling of our battery, but our whole regiment, from the humblest
wagon driver up to the colonel who, by the way, has just made himself
most unpopular with the regiment by being promoted to a Brigadier
Generalship. The colonel is passing upward to a higher command and the
regiment is sore on losing him. One of his humblest critics has
characterised the event as the "first rough trick the old man ever
pulled."

Midnight passed and we were still wheeling our way through sleeping
villages, consulting maps under rays of flashlights, gathering
directions some of the time from mile posts and wall signs, and at other
times gaining knowledge of roads and turns and hills from sleepy heads
in curl wrappers that protruded from bedroom chambers and were
over-generous in advice.

The animals were tired. Rain soaked the cigarettes and made them draw
badly. Above was drizzle and below was mud. There were a few grumbles,
but no man in our column would have traded places with a brother back
home even if offered a farm to boot.

It was after three in the morning when we parked the guns in front of a
chateau, brought forwa