Now came our longest rail journey in France. For two days we bowled along pretty steadily. We swung around by St. Pol, with a farewell glimpse of our old billet, and then south, through Amiens, up to the outskirts of Paris. Hearts beat high, and had the train stopped for five minutes at a likely looking place, I was prepared to see the battalion make a break for la vie Parisienne. The only stop, however, was for a few minutes to get routing orders from a business-like French R. T. O. From these orders I learned that our destination was Passavant. It might as well have been Timbuctoo for all that meant to me; but I had learned by this time that these French trains, with all their misery and sin, did get you to the proper place at last, so I didn’t worry. The houses of Paris fell behind, and we rolled east along the famous Marne river. At Haute Creuse and St. Pol we had read in the Paris editions of the “New York Herald” and “Daily Mail” of the desperate fighting along here in July, in which the mettle of our American regulars and marines had been put to so stern a test; and the next morning, a beautiful, bright day it was, too, we began to pass through towns whose names were yet ringing all over the world. The familiar signs of nearing the front began to appear--the roofless houses, shell holes, and so on. Then we began to see debris lying about--discarded bits of equipment and uniform, empty bandoliers, then here and there a new grave, marked by a helmet, and sometimes a little cross. Presently we went right through Chateau Thierry--one of the first trains since the battle. From our cars we saw the little firing posts that the Americans had scratched out in the side of the railroad embankment. Here and there a grave showed where one had died where he fought. Some German helmets over graves on the south side of the river showed where perhaps some of the enemy had gotten across before they fell under the fire of the Springfields. But the most impressive and inspiring sight of all to Americans were the hills that stretched up to the North of the river. A long steep, smooth, stretch broken only enough to allow of cover for reserves and machine guns--a position that looked absolutely impregnable if defended by modern weapons. And up these heights, defended by the flower of the German army, flushed with recent success, our countrymen had swept forward, carried the position, and hurled the foe back. It must have been some scrap.