The event had one consoling feature, and that was the superb conduct of the men. They had been told most awful stories of the effect of gas. When they found that their whole position was saturated with it, they felt that their chances to live through it were slender, and that they would surely be blind for a long time. And yet not a single man quit his post until ordered. There was no disorder or panic; the men of Company K were forced to quit their position, but they quit it one by one, and every man was a subject for a hospital long before he left. And the Company M men coming up to take over the position, and seeing the blinded and tortured soldiers going back, had courage in equal measure. Soldiers that will stand up to it as these had done under the terrors and sufferings of that night can be relied on for anything that men can be called on to do. LUNÉVILLE _March_ 23rd, 1918 We are quitting this sector and going back to the Langres area to rest up a bit and study out the lessons we have learned. Most of the companies have started already. The Germans are shelling this city today for the first time in over three years. It is an interesting experience to be in a shelled city, and, so far as I can see the results, not a particularly dangerous one. ST. BOINGT _Palm Sunday_, 1918 This has been an ideal Spring day. I said Mass in the village church for the “4th Battalion” (Headquarters, Machine Gun, Sanitary and Supply Companies). Later in the morning Major Lawrence and I dropped in to the High Mass. I was interested in the palms. When I was a lad we used cedar, before the days when ships from the Spanish Main brought their cargoes of broad palmetto leaves, which we carry in our hands on Palm Sunday and wear in our hats through Holy Week. Here they use anything fresh, young and growing, that the country and the season afford. The people pluck small branches from the trees on their way to Mass, the preference being for willow shoots with their shiny yellow green bark and furry buds. There is a fine old-world countryside flavor to this custom of plucking these offerings to the Lord from one’s own trees or along familiar lanes, that we never get from our boughten palms.