s
American Corps Sanitaire--forty men who have been with this same
division, the 31st Corps--for many months--had arrived from Verdun
with the 65th Regiment, and was to follow it into action when it
advanced again.

This time the cantonnement does not come up to Huiry--only to the
foot of the hill at Voisins.

Of course I have not seen our boys yet, but I probably shall in a few
days.

XXXVIII

March 28, 1917

Well, all quiet on the hilltop again--all the soldiers gone--no sign of
more coming for the present. We are all nervously watching the
advance, but controlling our nerves. The German retreat and the
organized destruction which accompanies it just strikes one dumb. Of
course we all know it is a move meant to break the back of the great
offensive, and though we knew, too, that the Allied commanders were
prepared for it, it does make you shiver to get a letter from the front
telling you that a certain regiment advanced at a certain point thirty
kilometres, without seeing a Boche.

As soon as I began to read the account of the destruction, I had a
sudden illuminating realization of the meaning of something I saw
from the car window the last time I came out from Paris. Perhaps I did
not tell you that I was up there for a few days the first of the month?

Of course you don't need to be told that there has been a
tremendous amount of work done on the eastern road all through the
war. Extra tracks have been laid all the way between Paris and
Chelles, the outer line of defenses of the city--and at the stations
between Gagny and Chelles the sidings extend so far on the western
side of the tracks as to almost reach out of sight. For a long time the
work was done by soldiers, but when I went up to Paris, four weeks
ago, the work was being done by Annamites in their saffron-colored
clothes and queer turbans, and I found the same little people cleaning
the streets in Paris. But the surprising thing was the work that was
accomplished in the few days that I was in Paris. I came back on
March 13, and I was amazed to see all those miles and miles of
sidings filled with trucks piled with wood, with great posts, with planks,
with steel rails, and what looked the material to build a big city or two.
I did not wonder when I saw them that we could not get coal, or other
necessities of life, but it was not until I read of the very German-like
idea of defending one's self on the property of other people that I
reali