There was a plan to return convalescent wounded to their original divisions, but in the pressure to hurry all available man-power forward to fill the greedy maw of the front it could be carried out only in a limited way. Thus, whether convalescent or newcomers, the replacements might come from a part of the country widely separated from that of the division which they were joining, and upon the division's welcome home to the locality of its origin by relatives and friends find themselves still far from their own homes. Maine was fighting in the ranks of a battalion from Chicago; New York in the ranks of a battalion from Kansas. The longer a division had fought, the less regional its character. The fortune of war never fell more unkindly than upon the National Army divisions which arrived late in France and were broken up for replacements, or, even in those final days when victory beckoned us to our utmost endeavor, turned into labor troops in the S. O. S. In that vital juncture, they went where they were most needed, which is a soldier's duty. I have seen groups of replacements, who had had so little training that they hardly knew how to use their rifles, moving up through the shelled area to find the battalion in reserve to which they were assigned. Only two or three weeks from American training camps, shot across France, strangers indeed on that grim field, they were man-power which could take the place of the fallen. In the late afternoon on the roads near the front one might see the troops of rested divisions marching forward to relieve expended troops. At Château-Thierry, our men, I know, went singing toward the line of shell-bursts. I am told that many put flowers in their rifle barrels and their button-holes. No doubt they did. So did the French and British in the early days of the war. There were no flowers on the Meuse-Argonne field, only withering grass and foliage. To sing was to attract the enemy's attention. The first enthusiasm had passed; our spring of war was over; our winter of war had come. Most of the men whom I watched going forward looked as if they appreciated that there was wicked, nasty business ahead, and they meant to see it through.