Our section was put on fire duty Sunday afternoon. At this duty we simply stack arms in the court-yard and wait around. In case of a fire in the city we are to keep the crowd back. I think the main object of fire duty is to keep the men in barracks. When we arrived in Lyon I purchased an English-French grammar but have had very little time to study and the light in the barracks at night is too poor to read by. But I will do the best I can to learn as much French as possible. The censor does not seem to interfere with our mail; none of the letters I received has been tampered with. We get all newspapers, magazines and other printed matter, without any attempt by the censor to examine them. Our squad contains sixteen men and is divided into two rooms. In my room are two Americans (the Greek-American sailor is with me), two Italians, one German-Swiss, who is an excellent soldier, two Spaniards and an Arab. One of the Spaniards has been in prison twice and is now serving his third term, fifteen days this time. One of the Italians is a good soldier; the other is guilty of an unpardonable sin, he snores. He wakes us every night; last night the sailor threw a shoe at him; when it struck him he woke with a jump, and was going to take the sailor’s life, but his music (?) had so provoked us that we were only waiting for an excuse to rend him limb from limb, so he wisely got under the covers. All in all we have a pretty good room. It is comical when it comes to conversation. One day we talk English, the next Spanish, the next Italian, but we all agree Divine Wisdom was absent when the Arabic language was constructed. When an Arab talks it sounds as though he was choking to death. The language consists of spits and coughs, and at regular intervals a sneeze is employed to give the proper accent. Larney is in the next room with John Smith (the fourth American), three Spaniards, a Swiss corporal, a Russian and a Greek. These three Spaniards are brothers and inseparable; the youngest is about thirty-five years old. They came from Argentina, having served in the artillery there; they are three excellent men. They were sent by the French consul at Argentina. One of the Greeks who came over on the steamer with us and enlisted at Bordeaux, has been reformed to-day, January 26th, and sent back to Bordeaux as he has consumption. This news completely nonplussed me as at the physical examination he showed up the best of us. He was well muscled and looked the picture of a trained athlete. He intends to go to Cape Town, South Africa, where he has a relative. He is a good-hearted chap and I am sorry for him. _Lyon, January 30, 1915._ The number of Légionnaries training in Lyon has been steadily diminished until only one hundred remain. There are a great many Frenchmen, however, training in Lyon. At Valbonne, twenty miles from here, there are about thirty thousand troops training, among them several companies of the Legion.