As you can imagine, quite a lot of the stuff used to get spilt on the way, and then the boys carrying it used to scrape it up off the ground and put it back again, so that nearly everything one ate was full of gravel and, of course, absolutely cold. More than once when the cannonade was especially violent we got nothing to eat all day but a couple of little old sardines; and, believe me, it takes a mighty strong stomach to stand that sort of treatment for any length of time. As far as we Americans were concerned, who were mostly accustomed to man-sized meals, the net result was literally slow starvation. _Repulsed With Loss._ The second night in the trenches we had an alarm of a night attack. I crept out to a "funk-hole" some thirty yards ahead of our trench with a couple of friends. It was nearly ten o'clock and there was a thin drizzle. We stared out into the darkness, breathing hard in our excitement. The usual fireworks display of searchlights and rockets over the German trenches was missing--an invariable sign of a contemplated attack, we had been told. Suddenly I glimpsed a line of dim figures advancing slowly through the darkness. "Hold your fire, boys," I gasped. "Let them get good and close before you loose off." They came nearer, stealthily, silently. We raised our rifles. Suddenly my friend on the right rolled over, shaking with noiseless laughter. For a moment we thought he was mad. Then we, too, realized the truth. The approaching column, instead of eager, bloodthirsty Germans, was a dozen harmless domestic cows, strays, doubtless, from a deserted farm. There were considerable casualties among the attacking force, and for a week at least the American section of the Foreign Legion had an ample diet. The next night the three of us were out there again, but there was still no attack, though we had rather a nasty experience all the same. We were crawling back to our trench about midnight when suddenly we found ourselves under a heavy fire. One bullet went through Thaw's kepi, but we soon saw that instead of coming from the Germans, the fire was directed from a section of our own trenches who thought there was an attack. We yelled, but they went on shooting. I was so mad that I shot back at them, but luckily there was no damage done anywhere. _Praise for Germans._