The rain poured down in torrents, and with a persistence worthy of even France in war, when we began our march. For neither weather, nor general or special orders, have the least regard for the soldiers’ comfort in emergencies; and no more consults their convenience than a brigadier general does a mule or an auto truck. The whitish clay stuck to our feet, magnifying them in both size and weight to such a degree that when, at one time, we halted for rest in a village Pat Quinn looked ruefully downward, and said: “It’s them that look like big loaves of gingerbread before they are patted into shape. An’ sure how will I iver know them again for me feet?” “A bog trotter like you,” said Sutherland roughly, “ought to be thankful for good clean mud like this.” And then, had not the mud been so vexingly deep, there would have been a quarrel. That night we halted in a downpour of rain in a small village, wet, tired and hungry, our packs and feet increased in weight by mud and water. But our hunger was soon satisfied by a plentiful supply of steaming hot stew with coffee and bread from our kitchen on wheels. Men sing of sparkling wine; but I have never tasted anything that equalled good army chow and fragrant coffee for comfort, after a long march. Most of our men smoked, as soldiers generally do; but Lieutenant Nickerson and I, and strange to say, Quinn, were exceptions to this general rule, and did not use tobacco or whiskey. An Irishman who neither smokes nor drinks, as Peter Beaudett said, “Was de queer bug, begar!” Pat’s explanation of this was, “Me mither tould me I had better not get the habit of smoking or drinking, or I might get where I could not get either whiskey or tobacco.” Those soldiers who do smoke say there is great solace in a pipe, but to my mind a soldier with the fewest artificial wants, is, on the whole, the most easily comforted. We soon began to see some of the destruction that grim-visaged war had dealt out to battle-scarred France. We had halted in a litter of shattered stone and plastered houses which was once a village. The walls were in unpicturesque ruin. Very few houses had roofs, and but few walls were standing. Yet we found several families still clinging to what had once been their homes, reluctant to leave the ground whereon had stood their dwellings, and which had sheltered, no doubt, several generations of their kind. These homes, and even the gardens, trees and vines were torn from the soil. Orchards and vineyards that had borne fruit for them and their children were cut down by shot and shell or, with German thoroughness, had been sawed down so that they would never again bring sustaining comforts to them.