The men, who up to this time had been bewildered by the rapid changes, now began to find themselves and make up to the French inhabitants. I have seen time and time again a group composed of two or three _poilus_ and two or three doughboys wandering down the street arm in arm, all talking at once, neither nationality understanding the other and all having a splendid time. The Americans' love for children asserted itself and the men made fast friends with such youngsters as there were. It is a sad fact that there are very few children in northern France. In the evenings, after their drill was over, the men would sit in groups with the women and children, talking and laughing. Sometimes some particularly ambitious soldier would get a French dictionary and laboriously endeavor to pick out, word by word, various sentences. Others, feeling that the French had better learn our language rather than we learn theirs, endeavored to instruct their new friends in English. About this time that national institution of France, _vin ordinaire_, was introduced to our men. The two types, _vin blanc_, white wine, and _vin rouge_, red wine, were immediately christened _vin blink_ and _vin rough_. The fact that this wine could be bought for a very small amount caused much interest. Champagne also came well within the reach of everyone's purse. To most of the men, champagne, up to this time, had been something they read about, and was connected in their minds with Broadway and plutocracy. It represented to them untold wealth completely surrounded by stage beauties. Here, all of a sudden, they found champagne something which could be bought by the poorest buck private. This, in some cases, had a temporarily disastrous effect, for under circumstances such as these a number of men might naturally feel that they should lay in a sufficient supply of champagne to last them in memory, if nothing else, through the rest of their lives. I remember particularly one of my men who dined almost exclusively on champagne one evening and returned to his company with his sense of honor perhaps slightly distorted and his common sense entirely lacking. The company commander, Captain Arnold, of whom I spoke before, was standing in front of his billet when this man appeared with his rifle on his shoulder, saluted in the most correct military manner, and said, "I desire the company commander's permission to shoot Private So-and-So, who has made some very insulting remarks concerning the town in which I lived in the United States." Trouble of all sorts, however, was very small considering the circumstances, and decreased with every month the troops were in France. We always found that the new men who arrived for replacements were the ones who were most likely to overstep the bounds, and with them it was generally the novelty rather than anything else.