However, we are working tremendously for the coming offensive. And I hope it will be the final one, for the Germans are beginning to show signs of fatigue. News comes to us from the interior, from a reliable source, which indicates that the situation on the other side of the Rhine is anything but calm. More than ever now must we hang on, for the victory is almost within our clutch. Accept, madame, the assurance of my most respectful homage, A------B------. So you see, we were all too previous in expecting the offensive. The cavalry is not yet really mounted for action. But we hope all the same. The 118th is slowly settling down, but I'll tell you about that later. XXXIV February 10, 1917 Well, the 118th has settled down to what looks like a long cantonnement. It is surely the liveliest as well as the biggest we ever had here, and every little town and village is crowded between here and Coulommier. Not only are there five thousand infantry billeted along the hills and in the valleys, but there are big divisions of artillery also. The little square in front of our railway station at Couilly is full of grey cannon and ammunition wagons, and there are military kitchens and all sorts of commissary wagons along all the roadsides between here and Crécy-en-Brie, which is the distributing headquarters for all sorts of material. As the weather has been intolerably cold, though it is dry and often sunny, the soldiers are billeted in big groups of fifty or sixty in a room or grange, where they sleep in straw, rolled in their blankets, packed like sardines to keep warm. They came in nearly frozen, but they thawed out quickly, and now they don't mind the weather at all. Hardly had they got thawed out when an epidemic of mumps broke out. They made quick work of evacuating those who had it, and stop its spreading, to the regret, I am afraid, of a good many of the boys. One of them said to me the day after the mumpy ones were taken over to Meaux: "Lucky fellows. I wish I had the mumps. After Verdun it must be jolly to be in the hospital with nothing more dangerous than mumps, and a nice, pretty girl, in a white cap, to pet you. I can't think of a handsomer way to spend a repos than that." When I tell you that these soldiers say, "Men who have not been at Verdun have not seen the war yet," and then add that the life of the 118th here looks like a long picnic, and that they make play of their work, play of their grenade practice, which they vary with football, play of their twenty miles hikes, I give you leave to laugh at my way of seeing the war, and I'll even laugh with you.