The billeting party, after working very hard and accomplishing very little, divided the area up as the French suggested. In advance of the remainder of our troops the battalion of the Sixteenth Infantry, which paraded in Paris on the Fourth of July, arrived. We were all down at the train to meet them, as was a battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins. They came in the ordinary day coaches used in France. I remember hearing an officer say that these were hard on the men. It was the last time that I ever saw our troops travel in anything but box cars, and this arrangement was made, I think, as a special compliment by the French Government. A couple of days afterward came the Fourteenth of July. The French had a parade, and our troops took part in it. The French troops came first past the reviewing officers, who were both French and American. The infantry of each battalion passed first, bayonets glittering, lines smartly dressed; following them in turn the machine-gun companies, or "jackass batteries," as they were called by our men, the mules finely currycombed and the harness shining. Their bands, with the brass trumpets, played snappily. Altogether they gave an appearance of confident efficiency. Then came our troops--in column of squads. What held good in Paris still held good--our splendidly trained little army did not dare trust itself to take up platoon front. CHAPTER IV TRAINING IN FRANCE "I wish myself could talk to myself as I left 'im a year ago; I could tell 'im a lot that would save 'im a lot in the things that 'e ought to know. When I think o' that ignorant barrack bird it almost makes me cry." KIPLING. A day or two after the Fourteenth of July review the rest of the troops arrived and my personal fortune hung in the balance, as I was still unattached. Colonel Duncan, afterward Major General Duncan, commander of the Seventy-seventh and Eighty-second divisions, was then commanding the Twenty-sixth Infantry. One of his majors had turned out to be incompetent. He came to General Sibert and asked if he had an extra major to whom he could give a try-out. "Yes," replied General Sibert. "Why not try Roosevelt?" "Send him along and I will see what he's good for," was Duncan's reply. I went that day, took command of my battalion the day after, and never left the Twenty-sixth Infantry, except when wounded, until just before coming back to this country after the war. Most of the Twenty-sixth Infantry was billeted in a town called Demange-aux-Eaux, one of the largest in the area. By it flowed a good-sized stream, a convenient bathtub for officers and men alike. We started at once cleaning up places for the company kitchens, getting the billets as comfortable as possible and selecting sites for drill grounds.