Luckily the station platforms at Le Havre were covered with bales of cotton when the Battalion arrived to entrain at 5:30 on the afternoon of October 31, for these served as excellent beds and they were universally utilized as such until the train was ready to leave at midnight. The following day, with stops at Nantes and Versailles for coffee and various halts all along the line for reasons at no time apparent, after the manner of the French railway systems, the troop train continued its eastward journey, passing through Chateau Thierry and the scene of the first battle of the Marne, through Troyes, where coffee and rum were served by French soldiers, to the destination at Neufchateau, where the headquarters of the 26th Division were located and about which clustered the various units of that organization during the period of training which followed. CHAPTER V TRAINING At 9 o'clock on the morning of November 2 the Battalion detrained at Neufchateau with hungry, travel-worn men willing to unroll their packs in any place having the slightest appearance of being a stationary camp, but it took all their optimism to greet enthusiastically the mud-surrounded barracks provided for the Company about three and a half miles southeast of Neufchateau near the village of Certilleux, in the department of the Vosges. Surrounded as it was by hills characteristic of that part of France, and isolated from the other units of its command, A Company developed its community along lines approved by itself. The barracks, of which there were four on the east side of the road and one on the opposite side, all of that temporary type of structure manufactured in sections and reared without much attempt at making them comfortable, were connected with wide stone walks. The material for these walks was brought from the hill near at hand after hours of labor which took the kinks out of unused muscles and increased appetites, which were far from being satisfied because of the addled condition of the supply service then prevailing with the American Expeditionary Forces. Three of the group of four barracks were adopted for the use of the Company, floors were laid, bunks of heavy green wood which had to be carried from the railroad station nearly a mile distant were gradually put into place, the kitchen was installed in one of the barracks with the mess hall as an adjunct and the orderly room occupying a small space near the end of the latter. Finally the small cylindrical stoves, the only available means of heating the barracks, were installed, three to a building. The single barracks on the west side of the road was fitted up for a guard house and supply room until the horses, mules and gun carts claimed it for their own.