Where the stream left the gaping ruins of a stone house on the edge of the village, there was a well-kept French graveyard, clinging to the slope of a small hill. Above the ruins of the hamlet, stood the steeple of the old stone church, from which it was customary to ring the alarm when the Germans sent over their shells of poison gas. Our officers busied themselves with, unfinished supply problems. Such matters as rubber boots for the men, duck boards for the trenches, food for the mules, and ration containers necessary for the conveyance of hot food to the front lines, were not permitted to interfere with the battalion's movements. In war, there is always the alternative of doing without or doing with makeshifts, and that particular battalion commander, after three years of war, was the kind of a soldier who made the best of circumstances no matter how adverse they may have been. That commander was Major Griffiths. He was an American fighting man. His military record began in the Philippine Insurrection, when, as a sergeant in a Tennessee regiment of National Guard, he was mentioned in orders for conspicuous gallantry. At the suppression of the insurrection, he became a major in the United States Constabulary in the Philippines. He resigned his majority in 1914, entered the Australian forces, and was wounded with them in the bloody landing at Gallipoli. He was invalided to England, where, upon his partial recovery, he was promoted to major in the British forces and was sent to France in command of a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. With them, he received two more wounds, one at the Battle of Ypres, and another during the fighting around Loos. He was in an English hospital when America entered the war, but he hurried his convalescence and obtained a transfer back to the army of his own country. He hadn't regained as yet the full use of his right hand, his face still retained a hospital pallor, and an X-ray photograph of his body revealed the presence of numerous pieces of shell still lodged there. But on that night of January 21st, he could not conceal the pride that he felt in the honour in having been the one chosen to command the battalion of Americans that was to take over the first American sector in France. Major Griffiths survived those strenuous days on the Pont-a-Mousson front, but he received a fatal wound three months later at the head of his battalion in front of Catigny, in Picardy. He died fighting under his own flag. Just before daylight failed that wintry day, three poilus walked down the road from the front and into Ansauville. Two of them were helping a third, whose bandaged arm and shoulder explained the mission of the party. As they passed the rolling kitchens where the Americans were receiving their last meal before entering the trenches, there was silence and not even an exchange of greetings or smiles.