We took the pass thankfully. It was good for a week and would take us "anywhere on the field of battle." We have always been thankful that this pass was handed to us by Ambassador Herrick in his private room at the American Embassy, and that it was requested of General Galliéni by the Ambassador himself--that it was his idea and not ours. For later it developed that a pass from General Galliéni was not sufficient to take us "anywhere on the field of battle"--the pass itself disappeared and we came back to Paris as prisoners of war. We were told that we were arrested because we were "at the front without credentials." Our defense was clear, because, we argued, when an ambassador asks for something, a record of that request exists. Ambassador Herrick made a similar declaration, and we were not only released but "expressions of regret" for our "detention" were tendered us. We rented a car and a French chauffeur. We wore rough clothes and heavy overcoats, we took extra socks, collars, soap, shaving utensils and candles. As food we took sardines, salmon, cocoa, biscuits, coffee, sausage, bread, bottles of wine and water. We also bought an alcohol lamp, aluminum plates, collapsible drinking cups and jack-knives. At four o'clock that afternoon we started. In retrospect I divide the ensuing days into two parts, and in the latter part I believe that the high water mark of my existence was reached--at least the high tide from the standpoint of new sensations, excitement, and genuine thrills. To digress for an instant, I have somewhere read the account of a person, a well-known novelist, who visited the French trenches months after the period I shall describe; when he got away from his censor and was safe back in America, he reported that no correspondents have really seen anything in this war--and that many of their stories are fakes. Some correspondents, including this one, have not seen much. Some stories have been fakes, including the one which he told. I wish it were permissible to enumerate some of the fakes in detail--but I wish for the sake of this person that he had been along in either the second or the first portions of that trip;--when, just a few miles outside Paris, we first heard the Sentries in the Dark--when, the next morning we met the first batch of Wounded Who Could Walk--and later, when we ate luncheon to an orchestra of bursting shells, a luncheon ordered quietly--to be eaten quietly, during a Lull in the Bombardment. (A) Sentries in the Dark