Along with the new engineers Nanny arrived in town. Nanny is an Alabama goat, smuggled on board the transport wrapped up in one of the boys’ overcoats. Her fleece is pure white and she is fat as a little butter-ball. Already she is one of our most distinguished citizens. Possessed of an adventurous spirit, she makes herself free of every house in town, being particularly fond of climbing stairs and appearing at unsuspected moments in odd corners of one’s billet. Madame explains the attraction here: “She smells an American, you see!” which is a quaint thought. Nanny is the pet detestation of the Adjutant, for she has a _penchant_ for straying into his office and nibbling at every paper within reach. Already several valuable documents have disappeared down her greedy little throat. Last night, in revenge, one of the boys in the Adjutant’s office, armed with a pot of bright red paint, painted Nanny in “dazzle” designs. Today she is a sight. This morning I was puzzled to observe that a considerable number of the newcomers were wearing pink tickets in their hats. “What’s that?” I asked. “Them? Them’s meal tickets!” They explained; the report had gone around that the chow of one of the companies was of superior quality; immediately the chow line of that same company had assumed an inordinate length. The mess sergeant, unable, since the company was so new, to distinguish his own men from the self-invited guests, had found it necessary to attach tags to the company. With the coming of the new engineers, the sale of one article in stock has swelled to unprecedented quantities. One member of the force is fairly kept busy from morning until night cutting off chunks of chewing tobacco. Texas and Oklahoma, it seems, have unlimited capacities for this commodity. Now with all due respect to the honourable American tribe of chewers, this indulgence raises a very delicate question for the canteen lady in whose charge rests the appearance of the hut. The scrap-boxes are already in a bad way, I frankly advocate spittoons, but our detail, who is a very superior lad, known among his cronies as “The Infant” because of his pink cheeks and innocently solemn air, flatly refuses. There are some things, he declares, to which he will not stoop, and he grows very stiff and red in the face if I hint at it. “I have discussed the matter,” he told me yesterday, “with several very eminent chewers, and they all agree that there isn’t the slightest necessity for their behaviour!” There may not be any necessity,—how am I to judge? But there is a very actual and urgent state of affairs. And what is one to do about it? Abainville, August 13. The hut is finished. Now if at any time Marshal Foch or General Pershing or President Poincaré should happen this way, we could say: Come in, gentlemen, and behold us; don’t we look nice?