The Germans had not retreated ten miles before the advance guard of the French civilian population began coming in to take possession of their shattered homes. I was coming down today from the battlefield whither I had gone with Emmet Watson and Bill Fernie to make a map of the graves when I met the incoming civilians in Villers sur Fere. Most of them were men who had been sent ahead by the family to see what was left. But occasionally we met a stout old peasant woman pulling a small cart behind her on which rested all her earthly substance, or a hay-cart drawn by oxen with the family possessions in it and two or three chubby youngsters with their mother perched on top. I followed a middle aged farmer and his son into one of the houses near the church and we made our inspection together. All the plaster had been knocked off the walls and the glass from the windows, and there was a big hole in the roof, and altogether it looked anything but a home, but after looking it all over the young man said to his father, with a satisfied grunt, “Pas trop demoli” (not too badly banged up). I certainly admired the optimism and courage of people who could take up their lives once more with cheerfulness under such desperate conditions. The Germans had made their most of the time in which they had possession of this salient. They had harvested a great deal of the grain and anything else that was already ripe and in some places they had ransacked the houses of any goods that were worth while. There were many evidences, though, that they had no idea that they were so soon to be dislodged. At Seringes they had installed an electric light plant, and the French road signs had been supplemented with the large legible German signs. Their sense of security was the cause of their largest losses in material, as they had made of the Forest of Fere a great ammunition dump, and the large shells, gas, shrapnel, high explosives, were left behind by thousands. I got back to Château Thierry looking for hospitals which might contain our wounded but found none of them, as they had all been transferred to other places, no one knew exactly where. In the burying ground I hit upon the graves of Sergeant John O’Neill of B and Sergeants Peter Crotty and Bernard McElroy of K and Walter Wandless of H. The city already presented a lively appearance with a great deal of traffic, not all of it military, over the bridge of boats which replaced the bridge that had been destroyed during the German drive.