I am afraid, however, that these edifices for religious and municipal uses made less immediate appeal to our fellows than the fact that the town possessed a number of large and commodious hotels, some of them ample for a whole company. We immediately took possession of these as well as of stores, beer-gardens and extra rooms in private houses; the principle being that every soldier of ours should have a bed to sleep in, even if the German adult males had to go without. Donovan and I went on ahead to billet for Headquarters. We called on the Bürgermeister, a kindly, gentlemanly, educated man, who was anxious to do everything to make our stay in town a harmonious one. His assistant, an agreeable young man who had been in America for a couple of years and had every intention of going back, came along with us on our tour. We had our pick of two or three modern villas of grandiose type north of the town on the hillside, the only difficulty about them being that they were a little too far away. At first two of our battalions were placed in mountain villages to the west, but after a week or so we had everybody accommodated in Remagen. I settled down with my gallant followers, Halligan and McLaughlin, in the house of the Bürgermeister, which faced on the river just north of the parish Church. My German is a very sad affair, but he speaks French and his wife English. They have three nice children, the oldest about twelve. I keep my relations with the parents as official as is possible, when one is dealing with gentlefolks, but if I am expected to avoid fraternizing with the youngsters, they will have to lock me up or shoot me. I had a conference with the Parish Priest, a sturdy personality who has his flock in good control, at my house the other day and we were talking four languages at once—German, French, English and Latin. But I worked out my plans for a Christmas celebration.