y couldn't pull any stuff like that on anybody
from Spokane, because he had never heard that that Maid of Orleans had
been married. Yvonne must have understood the last word because she
explained forthwith that she had not claimed direct descendence from the
famous Jeanne, but from the same family. Steve looked her in the eye and
said, "Jay compraw."

She explained the meaning of the small gold and silver medals suspended
from the bracelet. She detached two and presented them to us. One of
them bore in relief the image of a man in flowing robes carrying a child
on his shoulder, and the reverse depicted a tourist driving a motor
through hilly country.

"That is St. Christophe," said Yvonne. "He is the patron saint of
travellers. His medal is good luck against accidents on the road. Here
is one of St. Elias. He is the new patron saint of the aviators. You
remember. Didn't he go to heaven in a fiery chariot, or fly up on golden
wings or something like that? Anyhow, all the aviators wear one of his
medals."

St. Christophe was attached to my identification disk. Steve declared
infantrymen travelled too slowly ever to have anything happen to them
and that he was going to give his to a friend who drove a truck. When I
fell in line with the next passing battery and moved down the road,
Spokane Steve and the Yvonne of the family of Jeanne had launched into a
discussion of prize fighting and chewing tobacco.

* * * * *

In billets that night, in a village not far from Beauvais, the singing
contest for the prize of fifty dollars offered by the battalion
commander Major Robert R. McCormick was resumed with intense rivalry
between the tenors and basses of batteries A and B. A "B" Battery man
was croaking Annie Laurie, when an "A" Battery booster in the audience
remarked audibly,

"Good Lord, I'd rather hear first call." First call is the bugle note
that disturbs sleep and starts the men on the next day's work.

A worried lieutenant found me in the crowd around the rolling kitchen
and inquired:

"Do you know whether there's a provost guard on that inn down the road?"
I couldn't inform him, but inquired the reason for his alarm.

"I've got a hunch that the prune juice is running knee deep to-night,"
he replied, "and I don't want any of my section trying to march
to-morrow with swelled heads."

"Prune juice" is not slang. It is a veritable expression and anybody who
thinks that the favourite