Most of the men are buying uniforms and thirty-five dollar aviator boots and eight dollar belts and all that, but I think it will be better to wait. If the United States takes us over, it will mean another change of uniform. Perhaps my uniform will come in after all. At all events, I’ll have to buy a light serge uniform which will be cool enough for summer wear and dressy enough to wear when accepting invitations. They spend a good deal of money on clothes here, and dress pretty lively when they go to Paris. Around camp, though, there is no uniform or discipline. We wear black and brown leather coats; red, black, brown, yellow, and blue trousers; sweaters, flannel shirts; and green vests and hats ranging from sombreros to the Turkish fez. This is a division of the Foreign Legion, you know. All manner of strange people are to be seen here. The _refectoire_, called the _ordinaire_ is the place where we feed, in the animalistic sense. A crowd gathers about the steps as meal time approaches, and clamors in a multitude of tongues. There are carefully dressed Frenchmen, with sensitive features and dainty little moustaches. There are heavy featured Frenchmen, with coarse manners and rough attire. There are sallow-skinned Portuguese in dandy dress who have an air of dissipated ennui, and yet have a solicitous cordiality which makes them strange and out of place. There are dark-brown Moroccans and Turcos with red fezzes, Assyrian beards, and brass studded belts. The Russians, with their gray-green sweat shirts belted at the waist, their bakers’ hats with highly colored diadems in front, and their loose black knee boots, stand aloof and talk little, but with vim. They somewhat resemble Irish in their features; and in the heart of the crowd, pressing close against the doors, as eager and clamorous and more rough in action than all, are the Americans, pushing, scrambling, elbowing, to be first into the _ordinaire_. Only their inexhaustible good humor prevents one from criticizing them. Once inside, there is a great scramble for the head of the table. Men jump up on the benches and step on and over the tables with their muddy hobnailed shoes in a vain endeavor to arrange themselves favorably. Then enterprising mechanics, who get one franc per person per month for their service, bring in stacked pans of food. These are large receptacles of a gallon capacity, and there is one stack to each table. In the top pan is meat—usually beef cut in chunks, sometimes tough, sometimes tender, always nourishing, never savory. In the second are boiled or baked or French fried potatoes, or beans or carrots, or _mélange_, similar to succotash. In the third and largest container is soup, which tastes better by artificial light, and is always the same. A weak solution of beans and cabbage and potatoes with scraps of war bread afloat. This is seldom tasted, and passes on from week to week until it becomes richer from many cookings, and is finally eatable.