To beguile the tedium they indulge in what appears to be, next to crap-shooting, the most popular indoor sport of the A. E. F.—mustache raising. I don’t believe there’s a man in the company outside of Cummings and Maggioni who hasn’t tried his luck at it. Sometimes it seems as though an epidemic of young mustaches will break out overnight as it were. The second lieutenants jeer and witticize in vain. There is one squad who have solemnly pledged themselves to remain mustachioed until they “can the Kaiser;” but for the most part, the little “Charlies” are fleeting affairs that come and go according to their owner’s whim. This makes it quite confusing for me, because no sooner have I got to know a lad with a mustache by sight, than he shaves it off and alters his appearance so that I have to learn him all over again. But even the excitement of raising a mustache and having your picture taken and sending it back home to your best girl and then waiting to hear what she will say about it, affords only a brief diversion. And when that is done, we are face to face again with the stark sheer stupidity of drilling and hiking, hiking and drilling, day after day, week in and week out, in the slush, the mud, and the rain. “Another day, another dollar,” remarks my friend Mr. Brady with philosophic resignation as he comes in from walking post at night, “Betsy the Toad-sticker,” as he familiarly terms his rifle, over his shoulder. “I sure was strong on the patriotic stuff when I enlisted,” mourns a lad cast in a less stoic mould, “but since I got over here I’ll tell the world my patriotism is all shot to pieces.” “Who called this here land _Sunny France_, I’d like to know?” is the indignant question which someone is bound to propose at least once a day. “I’ve only seen the sun twice since I’ve been here,” complained one lad, “and then it was kind of mildewed.” “It stopped raining for three hours the other day,” remarked another, “an’ I wrote home to my folks an’ told ’em what a long dry spell we’d been having.” Altogether we are inclined to take a very pessimistic view at present of our surroundings. “This land is a thousand years behind the times,” is the reiterated comment, and who can blame them, having seen nothing of France but these tiny primitive mud-and-muck villages? “It ain’t worth fightin’ for. Why if I owned this country I’d give it to the Germans and apologize to ’em.” “It ain’t the country, it’s the people in it,” asserted another lad darkly. While the Tall Kentuckian declared, “When I came to France, the height of my ambition was to kill a German. Now the height of my ambition is to kill a Frenchman.” What can one say to them? I try fatuously to comfort by reminding them of the good time coming when we all get home again. I paint rosy pictures of a grand parade of the division up Fifth Avenue, but they are sceptical.