Now it was considered advisable for the Division to proceed to the 6th area. This meant a hike of some four days and nights. Accordingly, at 8 on the morning of December 26th, the Regiment passed through the main street of Grand and out over the ancient Roman road. This hike has become so famous—or so infamous—because of the undeniable sufferings of those who took part in it that it needs no detailed description here. It must by any impartial historian be admitted that during it the men of the 69th Regiment were insufficiently fed and shod, that they endured great and unnecessary pains and privations. It must also be admitted that they bore these trials with a cheerfulness which amazed the French civilians through whose villages they passed, accustomed as were these people to soldiers of almost every human race. They would crush their bleeding feet into their frozen, broken-soled hobnails of a black morning, and breakfastless start out, with a song on their lips, to climb the foothills of the Vosges Mountains through the heart of a blizzard. At noon (shifting their feet about to keep the blood moving) they would (if it was one of the lucky days) have a slice of bread or two pieces of hardtack for noon mess. At night they would have a sleep instead of supper. But they were never dispirited; they were never too cold, too hungry or too weary to sing or to teach the innocent French villagers strange bits of New York slang. No man in the 69th Regiment “fell out” during that terrible hike. But many fell down. That is, no one, because of heart-breaking weariness, or faintness or lameness went to the roadside and waited for the ambulance to pick him up. Those who finished the journey in ambulances or trucks did so because they had fallen senseless in the deep snow, unable to speak or move. And wherever the Regiment passed there were bloody tracks in the white roadway. “That hike made Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow look like a Fifth Avenue parade,” said one of the medical officers serving during this period. And many an observer compared the Regiment to Washington’s foot-sore soldiers at Valley Forge. It was only the indomitable spirit of the Irish American fighting man that kept the Regiment afoot through those four tragic days. The Regiment that arrived in Longeau on the afternoon of December 29th looked different from the Regiment that had left Grand four days before. To judge them by their gait and their faces, the men had aged twenty years. But their hearts were unchanged. As they stood in the deep snow, the ice-crusted packs still on their bruised shoulders, they had a laughing word for every pretty face at a Longeau window. The weary bandsmen started a defiant air, and the Regiment joined in with a roar. The song was “The Good Old Summertime.” III