The Chalons plains set all of us old Border veterans going again. The first comment was “Just like Texas.” A broad expanse of flat brookless country with patches of scrimpy trees that surely must be mesquite. But I delight in it. There is a blue sky over it all, and the long reaches for the eye to travel are as fascinating and as restful as the ocean. In Texas the attraction is in the skies. Half of it is beautiful. The half you see by gazing at the horizon and letting the eye travel up and back till it meets the horizon again. But here the flat earth has beauties of its own. It is God’s flower garden. The whole ground is covered with wild flowers—marguerites and bluets by millions and big clumps of violets as gorgeous as a sanctuary of Monsignori, and poppies, poppies everywhere. Colonel McCoy gave me a copy of Alan’s Seegar’s poems with one marked Champagne, 1915. Two lines of it are running through my head all day. The mat of many colored flowers That decks the sunny chalk fields of Champagne. Champagne. The word is a familiar one with other associations. We had thought that the bottles grew on trees and that the thirsty traveler had but to detach the wire that held them. And behold it is a land as dry as Nebraska. There are no such vivifying trees, nor lowly vines, nor even abundant water. A vastly over-advertised country in the opinion of the present collection of tourists. BOIS DE LA LYRE _July_ 7th, 1918 Bois de la Lyre—Harp Woods since the 69th got here. We have arrived in two stages. We were to celebrate the 4th of July in proper fashion with games and feasting. But there was not much with which to hold high revelry, and the games were practically spoiled by an order to move. Anyway, our minds are on other things. I came on Terry O’Connor, sitting with his shirt open on account of the heat, busily cleaning his rifle. “Man dear,” I said, “Where is your patriotism? Every man home has a flag in his button-hole. I’m ashamed of you.” “I’ve got me roifle” (patting it) “an’ me Scafflers” (pointing to the brown string showing on his bared neck); “what more does a pathriot need?” We moved by night, as usual, but not far, to the École Normale de Tir. The Normal School sounded big and fine. One expected a square two-story red brick building with white sandstone trimmings—but we found a collection of half underground iron covered dugouts, and all overground rough little board shacks. We would be happy there now for we find that this poetically named spot is some degrees less attractive. It looks as if somebody had put it up in a hurry because the cattle were out in bad weather. The Officers are in the sheds, the men out in what they call the Bois—which are probably thick enough for concealment from an inquisitive aeroplane. But that is all we need while this blessed weather holds. Sunny France had ceased to be the joke it was.