As I make my rounds amongst the men scattered through the woods, I find many whose names I do not know. In the original regiment I knew practically everyone by his name; but through a variety of causes half of those men are no longer with us and their places have been taken by others, with whom, on account of our constant motion, it has been impossible to get acquainted. The wearing down of a regiment, even outside of battle, is constant. Brigade and Division Headquarters select those that they want for their own work, bright sergeants are sent off to Army Candidate’s School to be trained for officers, and are invariably sent to other divisions. There is a constant trickle of sick men to hospitals, from which many never return to us; and most of all, there are the tremendous losses that a regiment, particularly an infantry regiment, has to pay in battle. Our total losses in action of killed, wounded and missing up to the present are about 2,600 men. Taking all causes into consideration nearly 3,000 of our original men have been dropped, at least temporarily, from our rolls since we came to France. If none of them had returned there would be now only 600 of them left, but as a matter of fact, nearly all of our wounded who have graduated into the “Fit for Service” class have insisted on their right to come back. So about half of our present total of 2,983 men are of the original outfit. It is easy to pick them out by glancing down a company roster, because our serial numbers are all under 100,000 while the new men have numbers running into the millions. I do not find that the spirit of the regiment as a whole has changed on account of these fresh accessions. A regiment is largely what its officers and non-coms make it. Practically all of our present officers have been through all the fights with us and have gained their present ranks in battle, and the non-coms are naturally men of the original regiment who have earned their stripes by good soldiering in camp and in the field. These men are the custodians of regimental pride and regimental tradition, and their spirit is communicated to or imposed upon the newcomers. Most of these newcomers moreover, have proved themselves excellent material. The first few that were sent us in Lunéville were poor foreigners from the coal mining districts who could scarcely speak English, but in Baccarat we got three hundred men from Camp Devens who were a fine lot of fellows, and, now that they have gone through the big fights with us, are not to be distinguished in any way from the original volunteers. We received a lot of first class men also from the Kentucky-Tennessee and the Texas-Oklahoma National Guard organizations, among the latter being a number of Indians. All of these replacements who have gone through battles with us are now absolutely part and parcel of the 165th Infantry and have created bonds of battle friendship with our Irish and New York lads which are closer than any family tie can be.