rd some lagging combat wagons and discovered the
rolling kitchen had gone astray. In another hour the animals had been
unhitched but not unharnessed, fed and watered in darkness and the men,
in utter weariness, prepared to lie down and sleep anywhere. At this
juncture, word was passed through the sections that the battery would
get ready to move immediately. Orders were to clear the village by six
o'clock. Neither men nor horses were rested, but we moved out on time
and breakfasted on the road.

The way seemed long, the roads bad and the guns heavy. But we were
passing through an Eden of beauty--green fields and rolling hills
crested by ancient chateaux. At times, the road wound down through
hillside orchards, white and pink with apple blooms. Fatigue was heavy
on man and beast, but I heard one walking cannoneer singing, "When It's
Apple Blossom-time in Normandie." Another rider in the column recalled
the time when his father used to give him ten cents for standing on the
bottom of an upturned tin basin and reciting, "Over the mountains
winding down, horse and foot into Frederickstown."

"The jar of these guns as they grind over the gravel is enough to grind
the heart out of you," said a sweating cannoneer who was pressing a
helping shoulder to one of the heavies as we negotiated a steep hill.

"What in hell you kicking about," said the man opposite. "Suppose you
was travelling with one of them guns the Germans are using on Paris--I
mean that old John J. Longdistance. You'd know what heavy guns are then.
They say that the gun's so big and takes so many horses to haul it, that
the man who drives the lead pair has never spent the night in the same
town with the fellow who rides wheel swing."

A young reserve lieutenant with mind intensely on his work, combined for
my benefit his impressions of scenery with a lesson in artillery
location. His characterisation of the landscape was as technical as it
was unpoetical.

"A great howitzer country," was the tenor of his remarks. "Look at the
bottom of that slide. Fine position for one fifty-five. Take that gully
over there. That's a beaut of a place. No use talking. Great howitzer
country."

During the afternoon, a veterinarian turned over two horses to a French
peasant. One was exhausted and unable to proceed, and the other suffered
a bad hoof, which would require weeks for healing. News that both
animals were not going to be shot was received with joy by two men who
had