I enjoy being with Donovan. He is so many-sided in his interests, and so alert-minded in every direction, and such a gracious attractive fellow besides, that there is never a dull moment with him. His two lieutenants, Ames and Weller, are of similar type; and as both are utterly devoted to him, it is a happy family. Ames takes me aside periodically to tell me in his boyish, earnest way that I am the only man who can boss the Major into taking care of himself, and that I must tell him that he is doing entirely too much work and taking too great risks, and must mend his evil ways. I always deliver the message, though it never does any good. Just now I am not anxious for Donovan to spare himself, for I know that he has been sent here because, in spite of its sylvan attractiveness, this place is a post of danger, so situated that the enemy could cut it off from reinforcements, and bag our two companies unless the strictest precautions are kept up. Major Allen Potts, a genial and gallant Virginian, who is now in charge of the military police, has obtained permission to bring up one company of his M. P.’s to help our fellows hold the line. It is a good idea. The M. P. have a mean job as they have to arrest other soldiers for breach of regulations; and they are exposed to resentful retorts of the kind, “Where’s your coat?” “Where you’ll never go to look for it—out in No Man’s Land.” Nobody can talk that way to Major Potts’s outfit. There was a gas attack last night on the French sector called Chapellotte on the edge of the bluff to our immediate right, and Donovan and I went over this morning to see the extent of the damage. As we climbed the steep hill to reach the French positions we met Matthew Rice of Company A, who was in liaison with the French; and he told us in the coolest way in the world a story of a sudden gas attack in the middle of the night, which put out of action nearly two hundred men, leaving himself and four or five Frenchmen the only surviving defenders of the hill. If the same thing were to happen at Chasseurs the Germans could easily follow it up and capture the whole outfit; and I can see the reason for Major Donovan’s ceaseless precautions. BACCARAT _June_ 15th, 1918