The best of it was that he had issued the order against lights himself about two hours before, and couldn’t very well blame me. An order came round to send a detail after some corrugated iron at point “G24a7.3.” I stumbled around until I walked on a sergeant, Bill Reid, and so I made him the goat, and told him to take a detail and go to it. The place was about 300 yards away over a couple of fields. Bill and his detail floundered off, and roamed about until 3:00 A. M., when they hailed a figure in the darkness as “Hey, buddy.” It was Lt. Col. Myer, at regimental hdq. at Hermaville, a couple of kilos away. He steered Bill back to the company, where he arrived at dawn--without the iron. During the day the sun shone at intervals, and we scraped out cubbies in the side of the trench, and tried to get a little dry. Barney O’Rourke, who had been missing since the night before, showed up under guard, somewhat the worse for wear. He had wandered off to Hermaville, met an Irish Tommy, found a hospitable estaminet, and subsequently had severely rebuked an officer from Rgt’l. Hdqrs. who undertook to reprove him. Regt’l Hdq. was all for having Barney shot at sunrise or something, and of course I got a call. At the courtmartial, though, we got him off with a month’s hard labor and a $10.00 blind, which was really quite all that happy-go-lucky, golden-hearted son of Erin deserved. He never did the month at that, or rather we all did. But he dug me a company headquarters when he came back, and it would have been fine only someone walked through the roof. We were relieved that night by “E” Co., 24 hours before we expected. We marched back to the clearing in the woods, had supper at the rolling kitchen, pitched pup tents and had a comparatively dry night’s sleep. Jerry came over and tried to drop an ash can on the kitchen, but didn’t succeed. They let us sleep late next morning, and we started for our billet at 10:00 A. M., leaving the 2d bn. to the joys of make-believe trench life. Right here I want to say a word about our experience with court-martials. There has been much criticism of military justice as administered in the A. E. F., but the 78th Division was fortunate in having as Judge Advocate a most capable, honest, experienced, broad minded man, Major George G. Bogert, formerly Professor of Law at Cornell, I believe. His assistant, Lt. John J. Kuhn, was an equally fine type of lawyer and gentleman. I know of no accused man who did not get an absolutely square deal from them, and from the courts-martial before which they appeared. Well, here we are back in St. Michel, rocked to sleep every night by the free fireworks from our aerial visitors. We had hardly rested from our trench experience before I was ordered to take details from each company to the rifle range. Part of “B” company had gone a week before, and their tales of woe had in some measure prepared us.