The voyage passed without any sight of hostile sea or aircraft, and after two weeks the _America_ came to anchor in the beautiful harbor of Brest. That is, it seemed a beautiful harbor at first, with its long white quay and its miles of dark green shore picked out with venerable gray stone buildings. But as day succeeded day with nothing for the soldiers to do but tramp the decks and yearn for the feel of sod under their hobnails, the view began to lose some of its beauty. There were two weeks on the open sea—these soon passed. But the week in Brest Harbor, in tantalizing sight of land, separated by only half a mile of green evil-smelling stagnation from shops and cafes and homes—that was cruel and unusual punishment. When, after six days a detail for the hard work of loading freight cars was formed, every man in the regiment volunteered—and this sort of a detail usually is eagerly avoided. The volunteers who were accepted had little to reward them except the pleasure of being upon comparatively dry land. They were given no chance to taste the delights of the seaside city. When their task of unloading and loading baggage was finished, they and the rest of their shipmates learned what “Hommes 36-40, Chevaux 8” meant. From 40 to 50 men entered the waiting box-cars, with hard tack and canned corn-beef (Corn Willie) to feed them, and their own blankets to protect them from the hardness of the floors and the cold blasts that swept in at the open sides. Three days and three nights of such travelling as no soldier of the 69th can ever forget, and they were at the village of Sauvoy, in the Department of Meuse. From this point a hike of some two hours brought them to the tiny village of Naives-en-Blois. Here was to be the new home of Regimental Headquarters, Headquarters Company, Supply Company and Company B. The other companies (including those of the First Battalion, which had arrived in the district on the fifteenth of the month) were quartered in the nearby villages of Sauvoy, Bovée, Vacon, Broussey and Villeroi. The Regiment was put not in barracks, but in billets. Now billets, to those of the men who had done guard duty in upper New York State during the previous Spring, meant comfortable bedrooms, buckwheat cakes with syrup for breakfast, and the society of good natured farming people. But billeting in the European sense of the term, meant something different, as they soon found out. It meant that certain householders, in return for the payment of a few sous per man per twenty-four hours, were obliged to allow soldiers to sleep in their stables, barns or other outhouses. They were not obliged to furnish any food, light or heat. They were not obliged even to mend the roofs or walls of the shelters. Straw for filling bedsacks was furnished to the soldiers, and they were fairly launched on their first winter in France.