During August a number of the field officers were sent on their first trip to the trenches. I was among them. We went by truck to Nancy, a charming little city, known as the Paris of northern France. At this time the Huns had not started their air raids on it, which drove much of the population away and reduced the railroad station to ruins. Round it cling many historic memories; near by was fought the battle between Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, and Louis XI, in which feudalism was struck its death blow; on the hills to the north the Kaiser stood at the commencement of this war, when the German troops were flowing over France, seemingly resistless. From Nancy we went to the Pont-à-Mousson sector, where we spent a day with French officers of the corresponding grade. This was a rest sector, and there was little to indicate that war was raging. Occasionally a shell would whistle over, and if you exposed yourself too much some Hun might take a shot at you with a rifle. Pont-à-Mousson, the little French village, was literally in the French front lines, and yet a busy life was going on there. There I bought cigarettes, and around the arcade of the central square business was much as usual. A bridge spanned the river right by the town, where everyone crossing was in plain view of the Germans. The French officers explained to me that so long as only small parties crossed by it the Germans paid no attention, but if columns of troops or trucks used it shelling started at once. In the same way the French did not shell, except under exceptional circumstances, the villages in the German forward area. On a high hill overlooking Pont-à-Mousson were the ruins of an old castle built by the De Guises. In old days it was the key to the ford where the bridge now stands. It was being used as an observation post by the French. I crawled up into its ivy-draped, crumbling tower, and through a telescope looked far back of the German lines, where I saw the enemy troops training in open order and two German officers on horseback superintending. In the trenches where the soldiers were there were vermin and rats and mud to the waist. There I made my first acquaintance with the now justly famous "cootie." During this night I went on my first patrol. No Man's Land was very broad, and deep fields of wire surrounded the trenches. The patrol finished without incident. The only casualty in the vicinity while I was on this front was a partridge, which was hit on the head by a fragment of shell, and which the French major and I ate for dinner and enjoyed very much. We returned to our training area by the same way we came. The principal knowledge we had gained besides general atmosphere was relative to the feeding of men in trenches.