Rain, hike, rain, slog, mud, mud, sweat, damn. Halt and fall out and sit in the mud for ten minutes and feel the rain percolate. Fall in, and hike again, your cold, wet clothes clinging to you. Eight weary hours of this. At last, just before daybreak, we turned off the road through the gateway of a once palatial estate, and hiked across a park to a grove where we were billeted. The fifteen miles we had covered seemed like 30. We were done in enough to fall asleep, many without unrolling their packs. The rain, however, found us out, trickled in at every corner, and morning found us miserable enough. No word was vouchsafed to us as to when we should move again; and this playing at secrecy cost “D” and “C” Cos. their meal. It was more luck than good management that gave me the hunch to rout out our weary cooks and have chow at 11:00 o’clock. At 12:00 o’clock orders came in a great hurry that we were to clear the crossroads at 2:30. We did it at 3:00. Our new lieutenant-colonel, Arthur Budd, had joined us the night before. During the first halt Lt. Foulkes came galloping up on old Mary, and his former platoon--the first--chortled with glee every time daylight showed between Louis and the saddle. Col. Budd promptly treated me to a cold and fishy stare, and inquired if it was the custom for “B” Co. to yell at officers when they passed. I hastily delivered a brief resume of Louis’ career with the company and the estimation in which we held him, intimating that he was regarded as one helofa good fellow, and that no mutiny was breaking out. Meanwhile I had hastily sized up our new acquisition as a goof. I had reason to revise this estimate, and that shortly. The rain let up this evening, for a wonder, and the march wasn’t half bad, except for the mud under foot, which we were pretty well used to. We passed by a sizeable cantonment of Chinese labor troops, and Diskin wanted to fall out and leave his laundry. We had only the most vague idea of where we were; in fact, our notions of French geography were of the crudest anyhow. Bill Reid, from his six-foot eyrie, solemnly announced that he saw the Alps ahead, and had the 1st platoon craning its respective necks for an hour. Just as darkness fell, we ran into an ammunition train, the tail end of the 42d Division. We pushed on behind them up a hill into the village of Viocourt, where our old dependable of the advance party, Sgt. Hill, met us and pointed out our billets, in lofts and stables on both sides of the “street.” We all knew pretty well by now that we must be in for action soon. The St. Mihiel salient meant nothing more to us than it did to folks at home then. The general impression was that it was to be a drive on Metz; and this wasn’t so far out of the way, at that.