On one of the days of the battle I was coming up the street of Villers sur Fere with Jack Percy when an enemy gun began to land shells just across the narrow street from us. We dropped alongside a wall when the shriek of the first one told us it was coming across the home plate, and as we lay there I saw a ration wagon coming down the road with George Utermehle, Sergeant of mounted section, H. Q. Company, on the box. George had no whip and was urging his team by throwing cherries at their heads. I shouted at him, “This is a bad corner just now, they’re shelling it.” “Oh, this old team of mine can beat out any shell,” said George, as he hit the ear of his off animal with a cherry; and he went tearing by in time to miss the next, and, I was happy to find out, the last one that came over. I overheard a conversation in the woods which gave me a good story on Major Donovan. The majority of his battalion have always looked on him as the greatest man in the world. But a certain number were resentful and complaining on account of the hard physical drilling he has continually given them to keep them in condition for just the sort of thing they had to go through last week. As a result of watching him through six days of battle—his coolness, cheerfulness, resourcefulness—there is now no limit to their admiration for him. What I overheard was the partial conversion of the last dissenter. He still had a grouch about what he had been put through during the past year, and three other fellows were pounding him with arguments to prove Donovan’s greatness. Finally he said grudgingly, “Well, I’ll say this: Wild Bill is a son of a ——, but he’s a game one.” When I told it to Donovan, he laughed and said, “Well, Father, when I’m gone write that as my epitaph.”