Our troops had now begun to arrive in France in large numbers. It was more than a year after the commencement of the war before this was effected. The inability of our national administration to bring itself to the point where it considered patriotism as above politics was largely responsible for this. Every move forward toward the active pushing of the war was the result of the pressure of the people on Washington. When I say that our troops were coming across in large numbers, let it be borne in mind that, though the men did come, munitions and weapons of war did not. The Browning automatic rifle, for example, to my mind one of the greatest weapons developed by the war, was invented in the United States in the summer of 1917. When the war finished it had just been placed for the first time in the hands of a limited number of our divisions; my division, the First, never had them until a month after the armistice. We used the old French chauchat, a very inferior weapon. None of our airplanes had come, and the death of many of our young men was directly traceable to this, as they, of necessity, used inferior machines. Our cannon was and remained French and its ammunition was French. Our troops were at times issued British uniforms and many of the men objected strenuously to wearing them on account of the buttons with the crown stamped on them. Our supply of boots, up to and including the march into Germany, was composed in part of British boots. These boots had a low instep and caused much foot trouble. These are facts that no amount of words can cover, no speeches explain away. CHAPTER VIII SOISSONS "And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy." TENNYSON. Early in July rumors reached us that we were going to be relieved. At first we did not attach any importance to this, as we had heard many rumors of a like nature during the months we had been in the sector. At last, however, the French officers came up to reconnoiter, and we knew it was true. We were relieved and marched back to some little village near the old French town of Beauvais. Everyone was as happy as a king. Here we heard that the plan was to form a corps of the Second Division and our division, train and recruit them for a month, and make an offensive with us some time late in August or September. General Bullard, our division commander who had been, in turn, colonel of the Twenty-eighth Infantry, brigadier general commanding the Second Brigade, and division commander, was to be corps commander. This pleased us very much, as we had great confidence in him. We had been in these villages only for a few days when orders reached us to entruck and proceed to some towns only a short distance from Paris. This appealed to us all, for if we were going to train and rest for a month, no more delightful place could be chosen for one and all than the vicinity of Paris.