"When you see us later on some time," said an American officer, "we hope to make you proud of your pupils." Although the French had already given the Americans all the fundamentals they would need they spent their last few hours in giving them some of the fine points and a minute description of just what conditions they might expect at the front. "When you go up there," said a French officer, "the soldiers you come to relieve will say that you are late. They will say that they have been waiting a long time and they will go out very quickly. Always we find when we come in that the troops in the trench have been waiting a long time and always they go out very quickly." As the sturdy Frenchmen marched away their cries of "bonne chance" mingled with equally hearty shouts of "good luck." CHAPTER XIX THE AMERICAN ARMY MARCHES TO THE TRENCHES THE chief press officer told us that we could spend the first night in the trenches with the American army. There were eight correspondents and we went jingling up to the front with gas masks and steel helmets hung about our necks and canned provisions in our pockets. It was dusk when we left ----. Bye-and-bye we could hear the guns plainly and the villages through which we traveled all showed their share of shelling. The front was still a few miles ahead of us, but we left the cars in the square of a large village and started to walk the rest of the way. We got no further than just beyond the town. An American officer stood at the foot of an old sign post which gave the distance to Metz, but not the difficulties. He asked us our destination and when we told him that we were going to spend the first night in the trenches with the American army he wouldn't hear of it. "There'll be trouble enough up there," he said, "without newspapermen." He was a nervous man, this major. Every now and then he would look at his watch. When he looked for the fourth time within two minutes he felt that we deserved an explanation. "I'm a little nervous," he said, "because the Boches are so quiet tonight. I've been up here looking around for almost a week and every night the Germans have done some shelling." He looked at his watch again. "The first company of my battalion must be going in now." He stood and listened for six or seven seconds but there wasn't a sound. "I wonder what those Germans are up to?" he continued. "I don't like it. I wish they'd shoot a little. This business now doesn't seem natural."