e
Association has ordered from Paris a number of permanent pine huts, 60
by 120 feet, which will accommodate 2,000 soldiers each, and keep them
warm and well occupied during the long cold winter evenings that are to
come. On the railway siding at the moment are nine temporary huts,
packed in sections for immediate construction, and a score of permanent
buildings have been ordered to be erected as fast as the locations for
the camps are selected by the military authorities. Indeed, the aim is
to have them on the ground and ready before the boys arrive and take
the first plunge in the wrong direction.

What is the life that our boys are living here at the front? Let us go
through a day with the battalion quartered in this village. At five
o'clock in the morning the first bugle sounds. The boys are quickly on
their feet, dressing, washing, getting ready for the day's drill. In
half an hour they are tucking away a generous breakfast provided by
Uncle Sam, of hot bacon, fried potatoes and coffee, good home made
bread, and as much of it as a man can eat. They get meat twice a day,
and we have found no soldiers in Europe who receive rations that
compare with the food that our boys receive.

By 6:40 a. m. the men have reached the drill ground on the open fields
above the village and are ready to begin the eight or nine hours of
hard work and exercise that is before them. Half of each day is spent
with the French troops, learning more quickly with an object lesson
before them, and the remaining half day is spent in training by
themselves. The French squad goes through the drill or movement; then
the American battalion, after watching them, is put through the same
practice. They are trained in bayonet work and charges, in musketry
and machine gun practice, in the handling of grenades, and the throwing
of bombs. There is evidence of speeding up and an apparent pressure to
get them quickly into shape, in order to take their place in the
trenches before the winter sets in. A few weeks at the front with the
French troops will soon give them experience, and after a winter in the
trenches, the men of these first divisions will doubtless form the
nucleus for a large American army, and provide the drill masters
quickly to train the men for the spring offensive.

On the day we were there, after a hard morning's drill, the Colonel
assembled three battalions and put them through the first regimental
formation and the first re