In any extended campaign it is a very rare soldier who does not get the experience of being in a hospital at least once; although we could not possibly spend as much time in them as rumors that they get at home make our people think we do. I myself have been killed or wounded at least a dozen times. The other day Lester Sullivan, who comes from my parish, looked up from a letter he was reading and said to me “Father Duffy if you had ten thousand dollars insurance for every time you were killed you’d never need to work for the rest of your life.” After battles of course they are being sent back by hundreds and thousands. Jim Healey was telling me a yarn which hits off a type of humor that is characteristic of the American. A hospital train pulled into a French station with its doors and windows and platforms crowded with “walking cases” and stopped on a track alongside a similar train with the same kind of a crowd looking out. “Where are youse guys from?” shouted one of the soldiers. “Fohty-second Division. Whey you all from?” “De rest of de Forty-second Division” came the reply—everybody shouting with laughter at this bit of delicate and tender humor. Hospitals thus become, like London coffee houses in the 18th century, the clearing houses of news and the creators of public opinion. They are the only place where soldiers meet men who do not belong to their own Division; in fact, soldiers seldom meet anybody outside their own regiment and many a man’s friendships do not extend beyond his company. But in hospitals, and more particularly in convalescent and casual camps, where they are able to move around, they come into touch with the whole American Expeditionary Force. Battles are discussed, organizations criticized, reputations of officers made or unmade. It is in these places also that the sentiment for one’s own Division grows strong. Regiments may fight with each other within the Division, but as opposed to other Divisions they present a united front. The regulars and marines in the famous 2nd Division have their own little differences, but they do not show when they come up against men from the 1st, 26th, or 42nd. Our own New Yorks and Alabamas started off with a small family row at Camp Mills which has been utterly forgotten, partly because they have always been fighting side by side on every battle front and have grown to admire each other, but even more, I suspect, because they have formed ties of blood brotherhood back in convalescent camps by getting together to wallop the marines.